


Family Matters

by purple_ramblings



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Aftermath of the War, F/M, Grief, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Misogyny, Post-War, Sexism, Single Parents, aftermath of family member death, final pairing will be revealed in time, prejudice and discrimination towards Muggles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:34:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 32,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21629203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purple_ramblings/pseuds/purple_ramblings
Summary: For a moment or two, after she spotted the flash of red from the corner of her eye, Hermione thought her eyes had played a trick on her. Hair of that orange-y color always drew her attention but when she looked back, the child she thought she had seen was nowhere to be found.~ ~ ~ ~ ~A story about family - born and/or chosen, by blood and/or tears, close and/or distant, grown and/or instant, ... Either way, family matters.Featuring the Weasley family, The Trio, A(nother) Trio and whatever or whoever else pops up in the process.~DISCONTINUED AS OF JANUARY 2021~
Relationships: ? Weasley/Original Female Character
Comments: 18
Kudos: 25





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A few notes at the beginning:  
> \- The pairing will be revealed over time. The first few chapters revolve in finding out which Weasley exactly is involved so I found that using the final pairing would have given that away. I'm aware that it'll impact searchability etc.  
> \- As a non-native speaker of English the sources and materials I have learned English from are varied from many different ‘kinds’ of English. I mainly use American spelling (-er, -o-, -z-) but the vocabulary may be a mix. As is natural with the Potterverse, there is an emphasis on British usage of the language in this story.  
> \- There will be (justified) criticism of Molly and the Weasley family - in my opinion it doesn't amount to needing the corresponding bashing tags but just be aware that this will not be a glossy, fluffy Weasley family praising story.  
> \- If you find there are any tags missing, let me know so I can add them. Unlike my other story, I don't think this story needs content warnings for most of the chapters but if there is anything I see myself, I will of course add them. If there is anything you find, I will definitely add it.  
> And now I hope you enjoy this story and if you do - leave a kudo, comment, and (or) subscribe :)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

For a moment or two, after she spotted the flash of red from the corner of her eye, Hermione thought her eyes had played a trick on her. Hair of that orange-y color always drew her attention but when she looked back, the child she thought she had seen was nowhere to be found. She looked around the area, for the color, for a little person that size, but there was nothing, no one. Maybe she was imagining things now, maybe having been on alert for such a long time was making her brain see things that weren’t there, now that she could slowly let go of the constant vigilance. She told herself to shrug it off and continued on.

Just a couple of months after the end of the war, Diagon Alley was still recovering. Some businesses had run through the war but many had had ceased operations for one reason or another, many much less willingly than the general public was to assume. Many shop windows were still empty or covered but a few courageous business owners were starting to fill the area with their magic again.

One of the first and possibly one of the most important ones that had just recently reopened was Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlour. Times were still dreary and all the raids and attacks on the streets and shops in this wizarding area had left their gray tint behind. A simple, seemingly small thing like ice cream was a great source of joy and normalcy at a time like this.

Apparently such rang true for the little head of wildly read hair she’d thought to have imagined because as she stepped into the parlor, Hermione did get a second look not just at the hair but also at the rest of the child whom the hair belonged to. She’d never been great with guessing children’s ages but she felt like the child might be something like four or five years old. From his clothing and hair cut she also assumed it was a boy. When he turned to a woman at his left, she could see that he had plenty of freckles to go with his red hair.

The thing was that the Weasleys were obviously not the only family to have red-haired family members, by far not. Statistically Scotland and Ireland had the most redheads worldwide and Hermione knew (non-Weasley) redheads from school and in both the wizarding and Muggle world alike. But even as she reminded herself of these things, she couldn’t help but watch the boy with a sense of recognition. There was something about him that felt familiar.

The boy was now marveling at the display of ice cream flavors to choose from. Fortescue’s wasn’t back to their full vast and varied selection of ice creams but they had a good and steady amount of the most popular back on sale. Hermione herself found her mouth watering at the thought of a cone of strawberry-and-peanut-butter ice cream for herself. Florean’s successor treated the child with the same endless amount of patience as the shop’s founder had always extended to his littlest patrons. After much hemming and hawing, the boy finally pointed his small finger at a particular flavor and was soon presented with a cone he had to hold with both hands. The woman he was with paid and they left the parlor.

When Hermione stepped up to order for herself, she finally realized that Harry was more than right. A little glamour could go a long way in helping them to get out of the house without being hounded by people for one reason or another. Hermione herself hadn’t been approached by anyone since setting foot into Diagon Alley which would have been unthinkable without the glamour changing her appearance just enough for people not to make the connection with her barely contained hair which still resisted almost all kinds of taming magic she attempted on it. She was then also reminded of her actual reason of coming here which was to check on Ollivander’s shop and to get her books for school.

It felt strange to get her school things without Harry and Ron but she kind of understood why they weren’t going back to complete their school education and sit for NEWTs. Ron hated studying in the first place and Harry wasn’t too fond of it as well so with the NEWT requirements waived for those who had fought in the war and wanted to become Aurors, they had no reason to go back to Hogwarts. In some way, she was tentatively excited about going back without the boys. Things were plenty different in the first place but she was very curious to find out what a school year without death looming over her head and without Ron and Harry distracting her would be like.

It was on the way there that she saw the little boy again, flanked by the woman she’d already connected to him but also accompanied by a younger woman she hadn’t spotted before. The younger woman clearly was his mother, now carrying what was left of the giant ice cream cone that was quickly melting in the August summer sun. Every now and then she would offer the boy another lick but otherwise ate the ice cream herself.

The younger woman was about as tall as Hermione, so not very tall at all, with brownish blonde hair. The older woman was shorter and she was, as Hermione could easily tell, a witch whereas the other woman was either Muggle-born or Muggle from the clothes she was wearing. Hermione felt as though the latter was true, the slightly pinched expression on the young mother’s face was familiar. It was the same expression her parents had worn the first time they had gone to Diagon Alley with her. Her parents were a topic she quickly shoved back into the corner of her head where she had stashed them and she ducked around a corner to keep watching the trio walk along.

The witch seemed to be introducing the mother-son-duo to Diagon Alley, arms sweeping this way and that, pointing at things here and there. The boy seemed entranced, completely captivated, whilst the expression on his mother’s face turned more worried by the moment. Hermione couldn’t blame her, this part of Diagon Alley showed many more marks of the Death Eather activities than the area around the ice cream parlor which had been the first to be rebuilt and cleaned. Here the dark magic and destruction were still very visible, even to a Muggle.

The young woman picked up her son and sat him on her hip as they passed Ollivander’s. He seemed perfectly content to be carried now but the way his mother was cradling him told Hermione how the woman felt. Intimidated, worried, scared. All very reasonable feelings to have when you were being introduced to a wizarding area after a war.

Hermione didn’t know the reason why they were being introduced now, any scenario seemed as plausible and possible as the next. It wasn’t a very good time to be inducted into the wizarding world though, only marginally better and safer than just a few months before. Even after the final battle, it wasn’t as safe as it should have been for Muggle-borns, more so for Muggles. If the woman had come before May… Hermione squashed down that thought and made herself remember that Harry _had_ won and that this Muggle woman was here _now_ and not months ago when she wouldn’t have taken more than two steps into Diagon Alley alive. They had a lot of rebuilding and cleaning up to do but Hermione was hopeful that the world the little boy was growing up in would be a better one.

As Hermione turned to step into Ollivander’s, the young woman turned at the same time and their gazes met. For a moment Hermione feared she’d been caught which she had but not in the way that made her heart speed up. The young woman had noticed she was being watched, but she hadn’t recognized Hermione. She held Hermione’s gaze for a moment, not shying away from the eye contact at all. Now aside from the obvious worry and intimidation Hermione also found something else in those eyes – determination. At a loss of what else to do since she had clearly been caught, Hermione nodded at the woman, an attempt to show that she wasn’t a threat. The woman stared at her for a moment longer but then turned and followed the older woman after giving the smallest of nods in return.

It only occurred to Hermione a little later whilst she was checking on things at the wand shop that the woman couldn’t have recognized her either way. First there was the glamour which Hermione checked was still in place and it was. But also, the woman was a Muggle and obviously new to the wizarding world. If she had been Harry and without the glamour, Hermione thought it possible the woman may have encountered his face before. After all, it was nearly impossible to move about the wizarding world in Britain without encountering Harry’s face nearly everywhere for some reason or another. Hermione preferred the background, the sidelines, which still made her face known just plenty but certainly not as much as Harry’s.

Flourish and Blott’s was one of the businesses which had been open all through the war. They had suffered as well, business dwindling as it had everywhere else, plus Death Eater raids, book burnings, the likes. But the doors to the book shop had never closed and Hermione embraced the familiarity as she entered it. The smell and sight of all the books filled her with warmth and comfort and made her a little bit excited to retrieve her school books and return to some kind of normalcy after the nightmare that had been the past year.

She saw the older witch first, from the trio, as she wandered around to see whether there were other books than the school ones that struck up her fancy. New books about the war were already being written and published which she felt was rushed and premature. Three months was not enough to digest and analyze all that had happened. Authors and publishers didn’t care for her opinion though and she stayed far away from those kinds of books. It was likely more of the same that had been written in the various newspapers which were ripping themselves apart to present the general public with new and scandalous details of the war. She had never had much patience for that kind of writing.

The older witch was cradling one of such books though and heading over to the children’s section where the little red haired boy popped up as well as the younger woman. Hermione watched them for another few moments. The boy was pulling books from the lower shelves where he could reach and also summoning books from the upper shelves which gently floated into his waiting hands. He looked delighted with it, especially as his mother attempted to pull a book from a shelf and the book would not budge. Hermione sighed to herself, they had such a long way to go in terms of including and embracing Muggle-borns and Muggles.

So the little boy was a little wizard then. Maybe he was like her, maybe both his parents were Muggles like hers were, or his absent father was a wizard much like he was. It didn’t matter, he had magic, even at such a young age. That mattered. His blood didn’t. They’d just fought a war to prove that.

Inadvertently Hermione neared the trio, following them through different sections. She only realized she’d been found out again when the young woman materialized in front of her as she turned a corner. The witch and the boy were headed for the register and Hermione quickly realized her arms were empty of books so far, not even allowing her the rouse of browsing for literature.

The young woman eyed her with a mix of curiosity and suspicion, hands in fists at her sides. Hermione’s wand had made its way into her hand in reaction to someone suddenly appearing in her field of vision. Too many months on the run had taught her quick reflexes as they could decide over life and death at any moment.

Not this moment though. From the look the woman gave Hermione’s wand, she could tell that the young mother was aware that she had nothing to set against the slender piece of wood in Hermione’s hand. The woman crossed her arms in front of herself then.

“I’m Kate,” the woman said, surprising Hermione. She’d expected an accusation, a question why she was following them, something like that. Not an introduction.

“I’m H-“ She faltered for a moment. “Hannah. Pleasure to meet you,” she caught herself and stowed away her wand in order to offer her hand to Kate for a shake. Kate took it slowly but gave a firm shake.

“I saw you at the ice cream place,” Kate stated simply. “And in the streets. And here.” There was the question, in between the lines.

Hermione nodded. “I didn’t follow you on purpose,” she explained although Kate had absolutely no reason to trust her honesty.

“You’ve been staring at my son,” Kate added and her look became a little more narrow, a little more piercing, a little more guarded. Again, there was no spoken question, just between the lines.

“I’m sorry if I’ve unsettled you, I just thought I recognized him from somewhere.”

Kate’s eyebrow arched. “We’ve never been here before. He’s never been in England before.”

“I must have been mistaken.”

Kate’s expression didn’t change. “Who did you think he looked like?”

Hermione realized then that Kate really wanted the answer to that question for some reason that Hermione couldn’t immediately grasp. She didn’t even seem that upset to have been followed around, she wanted to know _why_.

“Someone I know. Like I said, I was mistaken. I’m sorry if I unsettled you,” Hermione repeated quickly.

Kate took a step towards her and Hermione forced herself not to reach for her wand again. “Why? What about him looks like who you know?”

Hermione regarded the other woman carefully. She wasn’t about to mention the Weasleys and blow her cover but she was curious about what it was exactly that Kate was looking for.

“It’s just the red hair,” slipped out of Hermione’s mouth then and Kate stepped back, eyeing up Hermione much the same way Hermione was eyeing her up. “And the freckles.”

“Red hair and freckles are a recessive genetic trait which both parents need to carry in order for the child to have them,” Kate responded and there was an amount of urgency in her voice that took Hermione by surprise. Like she hadn’t been surprised enough yet. “Who do you know?”

The small red-haired, freckled boy in question served them an interruption while Hermione was still devising an answer, barreling into his mother’s leg and surprising Hermione another time by speaking to his mother in a foreign language. Kate answered, her words now incomprehensible for Hermione as well, and picked the boy up. She gave Hermione a meaningful look before she turned and walked away.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

For some reason Hermione was unable to shake the interaction with Kate from her mind and if there was one thing she had learned in the past year, it was that it did help to air out her thoughts to someone else to help make sense of them. As Harry was currently the only non-Weasley available, her choice fell on him. Catching him at a good moment though was easier thought than done. It was a few days until she was able to get him alone. He and Ron were often on mission for the Ministry, Shacklebolt using them to collect intelligence and follow up on clues. It was only at Molly’s very determined insistence that the boys got as much rest and time off as they did. Cleaning up after the war was turning out to be just as hard as fighting it.

“Hey,” she said quietly and sat next to him on the grass by the pond. It was sunny out but not too hot. Sticking your feet into the cool water still felt nice though and Hermione quickly shed her shoes to mimic her best friend.

Harry responded after a few moments. “Privacy charm, huh?”

“Nothing much gets past you anymore, does it.”

It spoke of their friendship that they both let those statements hang in the air uncommented.

“Can I talk to you about something?”

“Not Hogwarts. _Please_.” Harry gave her a desperate look.

While Hermione had accepted that neither Harry nor Ron were going back to school, Ginny was still trying to convince her boyfriend.

“We could devise a number of irrefutable arguments, if you’d like,” Hermione offered with a grin which widened when one spread on his face as well.

“Can you write it down and I’ll just read it to her?”

“You could try.” But not succeed, very likely. By now it was clear that there were no irrefutable arguments for Ginny.

“So what did you want to talk about? Not Ron either, please.”

Hermione pursed her lips. “It sort of has to do with Ron…”

“Will it make me want to gauge my ears and brain out?” He wore a slightly pained expression although Hermione really didn’t understand why. Her and Ron were trying to be as respectful as possible of everyone at the Burrow, including their shared best friend.

“No. It’s more generally about the Weasleys, I guess?”

Harry turned his head to look at her. “What do you mean?”

“Or, well, I think it might be but I’m not sure which is why I wanted to talk to someone about it but everyone here is-“

“A Weasley, or connected to one,” he finished for her. The two of them were connected to a Weasley as well but that was different.

“Exactly.”

“So what is it about the Weasleys you want to talk about?”

Hermione considered her next words for a few moments. “When I got my books at Diagon Alley last week, I saw someone and I just… I just have a gut feeling about this but not much information to go on.”

Harry smiled lightly. “We spent a year going on nothing much more than a gut feeling, Hermione.”

She nodded.

“Who did you see?”

“A little boy, maybe four or five, I’m not sure. He has red hair and freckles.”

Harry’s eyes snapped to hers.

“I know that lots of families have members with red hair and freckles but…”

“But the Weasleys have more than anyone else.”

Hermione nodded once more.

“Does he resemble any of them? Other than the hair and the freckles?” It was proof of his fledgling Auror career that he was asking that kind of question. Before, he might have stuck to the Weasleys being good people who didn’t have children that looked like them without anyone knowing. There was a word for that but one Hermione was carefully avoiding.

“I think so but I couldn’t tell you who exactly.”

He let out a hum and then a sigh.

“I spoke to his mother briefly, her name is Kate. She… kind of noticed me watching them and wanted to know why. I think she knew I had recognized her son and she really wanted to know who I thought he looked like.”

“Did you tell her?”

“Of course not.” She hesitated for a moment. “I think she’s a Muggle, Harry.”

He stared at her. “A Muggle?”

She nodded. “Her son could get the children’s books down from the shelf but none of them would budge for her.”

His eyebrows knitted together.

“It’s all very… odd and like I said, it’s just a gut feeling but-“

“I’ll see if there’s anything I can find out at the Ministry,” he cut her off and she could see the cogs turning behind his dark hair already.

“Thank you. For not thinking I’m crazy.”

Harry gave her a smile. “If I thought that, we’d probably all be dead now.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “You’re terrible.”

“Oh yes, yes, I am,” he smirked and made short work of tossing her into the pond.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so it goes on...  
> Happy New Year to those who are already in 2020 and to those who are still in the past :D  
> Here's to a decade of good things and growth!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Harry, what-?!” Hermione squeaked upon being whisked into the room he was sharing with Ron, the door falling shut and several wards going up.

“I think I saw her today.” His green eyes pierced into her.

“Saw who?” For a moment Hermione couldn’t follow.

“Kate.”

“Where?” she breathed, mind already reeling.

“At the Ministry. She was with an older witch but without the boy. But I think it was her. She was trying to get some information from the birth registry.”

Hermione’s eyes narrowed. “And what where you doing at the birth registry, Harry?”

“Research,” he answered innocently.

“Harry, you can’t just use your access to look through everybody’s files like that!”

Harry gave her a look. “Like that wasn’t what you expected me to do when you told me.”

Hermione quietened.

“Her full name is Katharina Schirmer and she is a Muggle, like you said. She’s trying to find the father of her son. She thinks he’s a half-blood, from what the file says.”

Hermione started pacing the room. Under Molly Weasley’s roof there was no sharing rooms with your partner unless you were married so Ron was still with Harry and Ginny and Hermione were still sharing as well. She was coming to appreciate those little things of familiarity more and more, things she knew, things that hadn’t changed. Of course, so much had changed and the dark cloud of Fred’s death still dampened the spirits at the Burrow, as it would for a long time to come. Which was another reason why this was best kept secret until they had something definite.

“Anything else in the file?”

“She’s German so that explains the language she spoke with the boy. His name is Benjamin by the way.”

“Benjamin.” Hermione turned and paced to Ron’s bed, turning again and walking back to Harry’s. Back and forth, back and forth.

“The other woman, she’s a witch. She’s listed as a contact for Kate. Harriet Walden.”

“Do you have their address?” Hermione looked up to catch Harry rolling his eyes.

“I wrote it all down.” He held up a piece of parchment. “The curious thing is that Benjamin is listed here so that means his father is indeed a British wizard.”

“But it didn’t say his name on the file.”

“No.”

Hermione narrowed her eyes in contemplation. “The question is whether the father’s name was never registered in the first place or if it has been erased. If we could find out whether the father is put in magically without the mother having to formally register him like in the Muggle world then… I’ll need to do some research.“ Her mind was already running away with more questions and possible points from which to start research into the topic. Of course it was all very delicate so she would have to be careful where to do research and who to ask for information.

“Hermione, why are you so invested in this?” Harry cut her off. “I mean, I understand it’s curious with the hair and the father not registered but it doesn’t really concern you, does it? You’re off to school in a few weeks. Maybe you should just leave it be.” Harry gave her that look he had when he thought she was getting caught up in one of her ideas again. He hadn’t given her that look in quite some time. For quite some time all of her ideas could have meant survival or an advantage over Voldemort so they had followed up on all of them. This idea though…

“I don’t know, I just feel that there is something there.”

Harry was quiet for a while, mulling it over. “I’ll see what else I can find.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

If Harry had really thought that Hermione would settle for what little information he had provided her with, he was sorely mistaken. He may have only shown her the parchment with Kate’s details for a few moments but Hermione had taught herself a number of techniques to remember fleeting details. If she hadn’t, the past years may have played out vastly different.

So Hermione had the address Harriet Walden had left on file and it turned out to be a terraced house in North London. It wasn’t a magical residency area, it wasn’t an outstanding area by any standards. The house was light brown brick, the street just off the main road with all the shops and with an underground station close by. The name plates by the door suggested that there were two flats in the house. Walden was next to the upper bell button.

A glamour, a different one, and a few other charms helped as Hermione scoped out the area and the house. This kind of skulking around was different than what she’d been doing months before but it didn’t feel very different to be lurking around again, trying to stay hidden whilst acquiring new information. Only that there was no new information to be acquired as nothing happened, no one left or entered the house, not even a postman.

In an attempt to stop herself from lurking some more, she made herself go to the coffee shop and sit down for a cappuccino. Only that when she stepped inside the shop, the person behind the counter was Kate. Was Hermione exceptionally lucky or unlucky in this case? She didn’t know.

There was no recognition on Kate’s face when she looked at Hermione who came up to the counter to give her order. Cup in hand, Hermione chose a seat by the windows to look outside. If that seat also allowed her a good view of the counter area then that was completely accidental.

Kate knew what she was doing, that much became obvious very quickly. Although Hermione now knew that the other young woman was not a native Brit, one could barely hear it. She served all patrons with the same friendliness and quickly worked her way through the lengthier orders. She cleaned as she went and never seemed harried or rushed.

Whenever there was a lull in customers, Kate went around and cleaned the tables, collecting cups and throwing away trash.

“Another?” she asked Hermione, coming to collect the empty cup and wiping down the table.

“Uh, no, thank you,” Hermione replied quickly and stood up to leave. She had to make a plan. She was going back to Hogwarts in a week and she wanted to resolve this before she left for Scotland.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Who is Katherine Sch-something?”

Harry and Hermione shot up from where they’d been pouring over their little collection of information but mostly questions. Ron stood in the door to his sister’s room and held up the note Harry had written Kate’s address on.

“You left that lying around?!” Hermione swatted at the dark haired wizard next to her. “Amateur!”

Ron came fully inside and closed the door behind himself. Ginny was out, getting her school things. Unlike Hermione she wasn’t that much of an overachiever that she needed to get her school books months (it was five weeks, thank you very much) before term even started. Molly had agreed to come and everyone else was doing their own thing now. Ron had taken a broom from the shed with Charlie to fly for a bit so Harry and Hermione had thought they were safe. George was probably in his room, like he usually was, and Bill and Fleur were looking for a house. Percy was likely back at the Ministry, correcting punctuation on files, or something like that.

“So we agree that this _is_ something,” Ron concluded. “Good because I was almost thinking I was going paranoid again with you two scheming behind my back. Who is she?”

Hermione and Harry shared a look.

“It obviously has to do with my family because you wrote Weasley here.” Ron showed them the note, pointing to Hermione’s addition to Harry’s note. “Harry wrote down the address, you wrote down my family name. See, I’m an Auror, I see those things.” He gave them an unimpressed look.

“Auror in training,” Hermione pointed out under her breath, something both boys often liked to gloss over.

“We didn’t mean to keep it from you,” Harry hurried to assure his best friend. Now Hermione was giving him a look.

“Yes, we kind of did but we can explain,” she corrected calmly and met her boyfriend’s eyes.

“Explain away.” Ron gave them a wave with his hand and sat on his sister’s bed, making himself comfortable. It spoke for all the things he had gone through that he was being so calm about them keeping a secret from him now. Hermione was very proud of how mature he had become.

“There’s this boy,” Harry started and Ron looked like he couldn’t decide whether to be intrigued or suspicious.

“There’s a boy,” he repeated slowly.

Hermione’s eyes widened comically. “He’s about four or five!” she hurried to tack on.

“A four or five year old boy,” Ron spoke slowly.

“He has red hair and freckles,” Hermione went on.

“A four or five year old boy with red hair and freckles.” Ron looked none-the-wiser as he continued to repeat the scraps of information they were giving him.

“His mother is Katharina.” Hermione gestured to the note Ron was still holding. “She’s German and she’s a Muggle. She doesn’t know the father but she’s trying to find out.”

“There’s a four, five year old boy with red hair and his mother is a German Muggle and doesn’t know the father,” Ron mumbled mostly to himself like he was still trying to make himself understand. He looked down at the note again. They could see when it clicked in his mind because his mouth fell open but nothing came out. “You mean…?!”

“It’s possible,” Hermione responded cautiously.

“He does look a lot like you guys’ baby pictures,” Harry added.

Hermione turned to him. “When did _you_ see Benjamin?”

Harry gave her a look. “What? You’re the only one allowed to go lurking?”

“You spied on them?!” Ron stared at them stunned.

“I just went to see what the house looked like,” Hermione mumbled at the same time as Harry muttered: “Just wanted to know where they lived.”

“Wait a minute, how _do_ you know where they live?” Ron looked back and forth between them. He didn’t even know which detail to get hung up on first, his mind was reeling. A red haired child who was a possible Weasley and his best friends going about stalking people? What even was happening?

“Harry saw them at the Ministry and checked the birth register.” Hermione threw him under the bus freely.

“Harry!” Ron gaped at him. “Clever idea actually,” he said a moment later, nodding in approval.

“Ron!” Hermione shook her head at him.

“Pretty sure we’re way past not breaking the rules again, ‘Mione,” he replied affectionately. “Now what is this business about this boy being a Weasley? We’re not the only redheads, y’know?”

“Like I said, he does look like your baby pictures,” Harry repeated slowly.

“As in mine specifically or…?” Ron frowned slightly.

“More generally, I’d say,” Hermione threw in. “There’s a sort of family resemblance there.”

“Show me.”

And that was how the three of them ended up at 13A Woodstock Road in Stroud Green together, all three of them charmed to the hilt.

“I don’t know what their schedule is like, it might be a while. Kate works at the coffee shop at the corner but she wasn’t there when I peeked in,” Hermione told them quietly. A Muggle was changing the side of the road, giving them a wide berth. It still fascinated her to see the effects on magic on unsuspecting people like that. Well, light magic, that was. It was good to know her concentrated repelling charm was working just fine.

“Good to know your charms still work,” Harry remarked with a grin.

Hermione gave him a side glance and made the smallest movement with her hand.

“Not again,” Harry complained, crouching to untangle his newly knotted shoe laces.

“There they are.”

There they were indeed. Kate, Harriet and Benjamin were coming around the corner from the main road, Benjamin happily skipping ahead but dutifully waiting at the corner for his mother before crossing the road at her hand.

“Blimey, he does look like us!” Ron cursed with wide eyes and Hermione was thankful she had also thought to put up a silencing charm around them. “Looks like a mix of the twins and Charlie when they were little. It’s like someone’s made another copy of them!”

“It’s called a clone, Ron,” Hermione supplied softly and reached to take his hand. He looked thoroughly stunned and stumped and she wasn’t so sure anymore that they should have brought him. This could mean a number of things for his family but most of all, if they were wrong and they told the rest of his family, things could turn nasty very quickly. Just the idea of putting the possibility of Benjamin being a Weasley onto the family table made her shudder. Most logically the potential father would have been one of the older brothers, Bill who was now married or Charlie who lived in Romania, maybe even George who was grief stricken. Or Fred who was dead. Logically Arthur should have been included in that list as well, she thought to herself gravely. No variant was favorable.

“Where did you first see them, did you say?” Ron squeezed her hand back, turning towards her now that the trio had disappeared into the house.

“Diagon Alley, at the ice cream parlor. Harriet was showing them around.”

“But he’s so little, if she doesn’t know the father how does she know he’s got magic?” Ron wondered.

“Accidental magic,” Harry supplied. “It was on the file we got from the Germans. He made some toys fly and burst into sparkles or something.”

“That must have been quite the shock,” Hermione said softly. She remembered well how difficult it had been for her parents to deal with her accidental magic as a child. She was glad that Benjamin was getting to know the magical world at a much younger age than she had. She hoped he would feel less alienated that way.

Ron rubbed the back of his girlfriend’s hand gently. He’d grown up in the wizarding world so he didn’t know any different but he had learned enough from Hermione over the years to know life as a Muggle-born wizard or witch was not easy.

“But it makes sense,” Harry remarked simply. “She obviously didn’t know he was a wizard but now she does because her son is one. Somehow she found a witch to connect to and now they’re looking for the father.”

“Did you note down Benjamin’s birthday?” Hermione asked then and inwardly scolded herself for not thinking of it earlier.

“Uh, I think so.” Harry pulled a few folded pieces of parchment from his pocket. “It’s… right here.” He handed her the note.

“8th April 1994,” she read aloud and screwed up her face in thought. “April 1994 minus nine months…”

“Summer 1993,” Harry answered, too quickly. “I already worked it out. He was…” He hesitated for a moment with a side glance to Ron. “He was conceived in summer 1993.”

“What was in summer 1993?” Ron wondered and scratched his head.

“Egypt,” Hermione and Harry said at the same time.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The thing about Ron was that he could be stubborn. Very stubborn. And he was being very, very stubborn about the fact that he thought he could wheedle some information about their Egypt holiday from his brothers. Without them noticing of course. Which… Well, Harry and Hermione both had their thoughts but since they needed to wrap this up before she had to leave for school, there really wasn’t a whole lot of time to come up with another plan.

Another thing about Ron was that he was about as subtle as a bull in a china shop. Even if Hermione and Harry hadn’t known something was up, within a day they would have known – as did everyone else. Just like everyone else was now aware that Ron was suddenly very interested in remembering their trip to Egypt.

Charlie didn’t appreciate the pestering, preferring to spend time outside the house most of the time anyway. Bill didn’t appreciate being reminded of his old job which he still missed but never would admit to it. George didn’t appreciate being asked to remember anything that wasn’t his twin just as he didn’t appreciate being asked to remember anything with his twin. And Arthur didn’t want to keep dwelling the past, as he said. Egypt seemed several lifetimes away to everyone, except Ron apparently.

“It’s all most suspicious,” Ron insisted as they convened in the boys’ room that evening.

“It is also all most delicate,” Hermione reminded him calmly. “We can’t just go to them and ask them if they… did that.” She made a face.

“We can’t ask _them_ ,” Harry agreed. “But we could ask _Kate_.”

“What? We can’t just-“ Hermione’s eyes widened.

“No, no, he’s right.” Ron hurried to assent with Harry. “You said it yourself – Kate _wanted_ to know who you thought Benjamin looked like. She’s looking for his father. She’ll tell us anything we want to know.”

Hermione kept her frown but didn’t outright disagree. She didn’t believe it was their best idea how to deal with the situation but it was certainly the quickest.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The next morning they were back in Stroud Green and in front of 13A Woodstock Road. Another woman was working at the busy coffee shop and several residents were leaving for work.

“It’s too early,” Ron yawned, belatedly raising his hand to cover his wide open mouth. Hermione crinkled her nose. “What if they’re not up yet?”

“They will be, Benjamin is four. Children that age wake early,” Hermione told him and took a deep breath. “So I will go and knock first. She probably won’t recognize me straight away because I was always wearing glamours but I should be able to explain myself inside. Once I feel it’s safe, I’ll-“

“Use the coin and we’ll come as well,” Ron finished for her impatiently, showing the coin Hermione had charmed just for the three of them. They all still had their Dumbledore’s Army ones but they really didn’t need anyone else to show up here at the off chance some other members were still carrying theirs around with them. “Just go already.”

“First it’s too early, now it can’t happen fast enough, Ronald,” she scolded him lightly and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek before darting across the street and up the stairs to the front door.

Ron watched on as she rang the bell with a rather besotted expression on his face, one Harry chose not to comment on. A few moments passed then the door opened and Hermione disappeared inside.

As she pressed the bell button, Hermione contemplated how to introduce herself. She heard someone on a staircase inside, then the front door opened and Kate stood in front of her. Before Hermione could even say anything, Kate opened the door wider and let her in.

“Sorry to bother you so early in the morning, I’m-“ she began but was cut off.

“I was wondering when you were going to find your way in,” Kate told her with a very knowing look on her face. “Took you long enough.”

Hermione blinked. “I- Excuse me? I don’t think I- How do you-“

Kate grinned and Hermione learned that dimples had to be a hereditary trait just like freckles because they made little dents in Kate’s cheeks much the same way Hermione and her friends had seen just a few days ago on Benjamin’s.

“Your shoes,” Hermione was informed and stared after Kate who was already going back up the stairs.

“My… shoes?” Hermione looked down herself to her feet. She was wearing completely normal, unsuspicious trainers. Which she had been wearing nearly every day the whole summer. Merlin’s beard, how stupid was she?

“Are you coming or not?” Kate called from the top of the staircase.

Hermione took a deep breath and made her way up the stairs.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First chapter in the new year :)  
> I intend to have some sort of updating schedule starting next week, this story is tentatively slotted for Tuesday/Wednesday and my other story for Saturday/Sunday. Always depending on how the writing goes, of course.  
> I'd love to hear your thoughts, guesses, ideas on which Weasley you think might be Benni's father. I'll definitely respond to every comment, as I always do, but I won't give it away beforehand of course ;)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Would you like some tea? We’re still finishing up breakfast.” Kate led Hermione through the flat door and just around the corner into a small but cozy family room. Despite the small size, they somehow made it fit both a dining area with a table and four chairs as well as a sitting down area with a small sofa, an arm chair and a TV.

At the table, Benjamin was obviously still eating breakfast, pushing a spoon full of what Hermione assumed to be cereal into his mouth. He comically froze at the sight of the unfamiliar woman, spoon sticking out of his mouth.

“I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean to impose on breakfast. I can come back later if you’d like,” Hermione apologized once again, feeling like she was intruding. Benjamin was still sitting there staring at her with the spoon sticking out of his mouth.

Kate said something to him, something in German because Hermione didn’t understand any of it, and then Harriet chuckled before she gently pulled the spoon out of Benjamin’s mouth. She also said something to him to which he gave a very toothy grin. Merlin, he was adorable.

A moment later Benjamin pushed himself out of his chair and ran over to them. A rapid string of words came out of his mouth as he regarded her with great curiosity but again, Hermione understood nothing.

Kate gave her a quick smile and crouched down next to her son. “You have to speak English with her, Benni,” she told him. “Can you ask her again in English?”

He eyed the stranger with even more curiosity. “Are you a witch?” he asked eagerly then burst forward and basically plastered himself to her knees. “Can I see your wand?”

Hermione blinked at him owlishly.

“I’m sorry, that was not what he asked you in German,” Kate explained quickly, straightening up again. “He’s very fascinated by anyone who has magic. Benni, you know we don’t ask people we don’t know that question, remember? It’s not polite.”

Benjamin glanced at his mother but then stared upwards at Hermione eagerly a moment later. He clearly still wanted an answer.

“It’s alright,” Hermione assured the young mother and crouched down herself, making herself smaller and more to Benjamin’s level. “Hello Benjamin, I’m Hermione.”

He scrunched his freckled nose at her. “Her-my-ee.”

“Not quite but it’s a difficult name, I know.” She chuckled and he grinned. He obviously already knew the power of that freckled, dimpled grin. God help them. “To answer your question, I am a witch and I do have a wand.” She pulled it from its concealed place and showed it to him. His light brown eyes widened even more, if at all possible, and he seemed to cease breathing at the sight of the magical object.

“Make me fly!” he requested breathlessly and Kate badly concealed a snort.

“He wants you to levitate him,” she explained with a smile and an apologetic shrug.

“Oh, uh…” When was the last time Hermione had been around a child that young? It seemed fairly obvious to her now that this kind of magic would be incredibly intriguing to a child. She straightened up and pointed her wand at Benjamin after checking with Kate it really was alright. Maybe she could get herself a few good points before the hard questions and facts were put on the table. “Wingardium leviosa,” she spoke the incantation and very carefully made Benjamin lift off the floor for a foot or so. She vaguely recalled that falls above one’s height were deemed more dangerous than ones below, especially as a child – not that she had any intention to drop Benjamin, but just in case.

Benjamin thoroughly enjoyed the little lift she gave him either way, squealing with glee as she moved him over to the table and raised him a little more to put him back into his chair.

Harriet went to the kitchen to retrieve another cup for Hermione while Kate quickly moved some stuff off the extra chair they evidently used rarely. She sat down and watched as Benjamin went back to shoveling cereal into his mouth. The action was so familiar that the remaining doubts he was a Weasley were shrinking by the minute.

“Would you like some as well?” Kate asked, watching Hermione watch her son.

“Oh, no, thank you. We’ve already had something for breakfast,” Hermione answered quickly.

“We?” Kate looked at her over the rim of her mug and though nothing in her friendly expression changed, Hermione felt very aware of the fact that Kate seemed incredibly observant. The shoes, spotting her in Diagon Alley. Had she worn the same shoes to the coffee shop? Hermione wasn’t sure but she probably had. Had Kate recognized her there as well? Likely, yes.

“Uhm.”

Harriet saved her from having to answer right away, returning with another mug and a fresh pot of tea. Benjamin said something to her which Hermione only caught the end of which was ‘nana’. So Harriet was a grandmother to him although Hermione recalled that she wasn’t listed as such in his birth file, at least not officially. She probably wasn’t Kate’s mother then.

“Are you finished with breakfast?” Harriet responded in English, no doubt for Hermione’s benefit.

Benjamin nodded dutifully.

“Then we can go brush our teeth and wash our hands and then you can go and play.”

He nodded again, a little more eagerly, and slid out of his chair, small feet quickly carrying him out of the room, trailed by Harriet.

“You’re probably wondering how I’m here,” Hermione started when Kate hadn’t said anything for what felt like several very long moments.

Kate smiled wryly. “I have many questions, Hermione, but since the first time my son made his favorite tiger toy fly, I have learned that answers are not something I will receive freely – no matter if they regard my very own flesh and blood.”

There was a lot to unpack in that statement and Hermione nodded shortly. The magical community wasn’t exactly forthcoming with information towards Muggle parents, unless it was to remind them about the Statute of Secrecy they now had to adhere to or have their memories erased. She wondered in what manner the German magical authorities went about that kind of business.

“Like I said, my name is Hermione, Hermione Granger. And as you have probably realized, I do know a family which your son may be related to.”

Kate had another sip of her drink before she cupped the mug in both hands, seeming thoughtful. “Hermione Granger,” she repeated the name slowly like she was trying to place it. Then she smiled lightly. “Does ‘we’ mean Harry and, what was his name again, Ron? Are they waiting outside?” She looked over to the front door, this room’s windows going out to the backyard.

Hermione nodded lightly.

Suddenly Kate’s expression went blank and very impenetrable. “Harriet, where is that newspaper you had yesterday?” she asked loudly, shooting up from her seat and briskly walking over to the coffee table where there was a stack of papers and magazines. “The magic one.” She found it before Harriet had come back into the room. “Where is it, where is it, where is it,” she muttered to herself, leafing through the pages. “There.” She went very quiet and Hermione came over to see what Kate was looking at.

It was a picture of Harry, Ron and her from months ago, the headline something about new details about the Battle of Hogwarts. Not something Hermione would have paid a lot of attention to.

“He’s so much taller now,” Kate whispered, finger tracing the moving picture version of Ron.

Suddenly Hermione felt very cold. Was Ron…?

“He was just a boy the last time I saw him. I don’t know how I didn’t recognize him,” Kate went on. “I’ve seen his picture in the paper a few times.”

“It’s not Ron, is it?” Hermione heard herself asking tonelessly.

Kate looked up sharply and that impenetrable blank expression was back. “I’m 24 years old, Miss Granger. He was a teenager when I last saw him and he very probably still is one. No, he is not Benni’s father.” The difference in her voice and the formal way of addressing Hermione made Hermione feel as though there was now a distance between them that hadn’t been there before.

“I’m sorry, I just-“

“Does he have a brother named Daniel?” Kate cut her off impatiently.

“Daniel?”

Kate put down the newspaper and went back to the breakfast table, sitting down and refilling her mug as if nothing had happened. “He told me his name was Daniel.”

“Ron doesn’t have a brother named Daniel,” Hermione answered slowly, sitting back down herself. “He does have four older brothers though. Well, three.”

Kate looked at her for a moment. “One died in the war,” she concluded a moment later.

Hermione nodded. “During the last battle.”

“Miss Granger, I think you’re a smart young woman. I think you know that a war doesn’t just end because one party had to surrender. You probably know I’m German, if you know anything about Muggle world history you know what happened in my country and the rest of Europe because of a madman taking control and trying to erase a certain group of people. People are still paying the price for it and it’s been more than 40 years.”

Hermione swallowed thickly and was glad to have her own tea to sip on to gather a few moments.

“Please call me Hermione. And I am aware of Muggle world history,” she noted quietly. “I’m Muggle-born.”

“That means your parents aren’t magical,” Kate responded in a slightly questioning tone.

“Yes, they aren’t.”

“They thought Benni was like that too.” Kate let out a sigh and her shoulders dropped sligthly. She seemed more approachable again. “Only Harriet remembered I’d said he was British so she reached out here and since there was a birth registered, the father had to be a British wizard. Apparently.”

“That means he’s a half-blood,” Hermione supplied since Kate had seemed slightly unsure about Muggle-borns.

Kate gave a shrug. “I don’t give a damn what kind of blood he is or not. He’s got magic, that’s what counts. In World War 2, they used to calculate people with Jewish ancestry down to the eighth or more. It doesn’t matter if it’s about Jewish blood or magical or black or Asian or whatever. That kind of seeing the world is fucked up and anyone that sees it that way should be given the option to learn better or to be locked up. But that’s just my opinion.” She raised her chin defiantly. “Will his father care?”

Hermione was still stuck on that rant of passion that had just come out of the woman. For a split moment she wished she could introduce her to Draco Malfoy, or any pureblood for that matter, and see them try to explain themselves. It was very clear that Kate would not stand for it.

“Merlin no, he won’t,” she hurried to assure Kate, shaking her head. “The Weasleys don’t care. They’ve always been open to anyone, no matter their background or origin. They are a pureblood family, that is true, and there are pureblood families that care about blood status but they are not one of them. In fact, they are considered ‘blood traitors’ by those kinds of families.”

“And by those kinds of families you mean the kind of families who followed Voldemort.” Kate spoke the name so easily, at most with a hint of disgust or disdain. She was surprisingly knowledgeable about the wizarding world, Hermione hadn’t expected that. She was also slightly envious of the way Kate could be so detached from the name. Although she had always advocated for using the real name, Hermione was sick of hearing it and sometimes it still made her shudder to hear it or use it. Then there was the fact that it had been a taboo that had brought tangible consequences on them.

“Yes.”

“Well, you’re being hailed as a war hero so I know what side you were on,” Kate allowed with a flat smile.

“As were the Weasleys.”

Kate nodded and finished her tea. “Now, do you want to relieve your friends from their outpost or do you want to let them stew for another while?” A hint of mischief sparkled in her blue eyes.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll call them in. You can speak to Ron directly.”

For Ron and Harry on the outside of the house, the time until the coins warmed up felt like hours when in reality it was no more than 20 minutes. 20 minutes in which a lot could have happened according to Ron’s rant after about two of those 20 had passed. The protectiveness Ron displayed about Hermione amused Harry most of the time. They had survived the war in part due to Hermione’s incomparable skill set and she knew how to take care of herself, all of which Ron had had a first row seat in experiencing in the past few years. Yet here he was, ranting about whether or not they should storm in there brandishing their Auror badges, demanding answers. Harry all but had to slow Ron down when the coin warmed up in their hands, lest his friend storm in there after all.

Hermione seemed completely fine when they were let in, not a hair out of place. Well, no more out of place than usual. She seemed thoughtful but otherwise not alarmed or worried.

“You’re a lot taller than the last time I saw you,” Kate remarked after she had let the two young men inside, getting a first hand look at Ron after five years.

Ron balked. “You’ve seen me before?”

“Yeah, you were about this high then,” Kate chuckled and indicated her own height which was fairly accurate for Ron between second and third year. He was now considerably taller and starting to fill out his frame as well. Molly was making sure they were replenishing their haggard bodies. “Come on in, we can sit down and have some tea.” She turned to lead them into the family room, the sofa section this time to accommodate all of them, when a flash of red bolted past them and a child’s giggle resounded as Benjamin wrapped himself around Hermione’s knees again.

“Can you make me fly again?” he begged, blinking up at her through his honey colored eyes. “What else can you do? Do you want to come and play? You can make Tigger fly too!”

It was different seeing Benjamin across the street at his mother’s hand to seeing him wrapped around his girlfriend’s legs, Ron realized. He stood rooted to the spot, staring at the little boy who very well might be his nephew. There was definitely familial resemblance there.

“Blimey, he does look like us!” escaped Ron and while Hermione immediately chastised him, Kate wore an amused smirk.

“Benni, Hermione can’t play right now but maybe a little later, okay? Where did you leave Harriet?” She turned to her son and held out a hand towards him. “You said you wanted to make some more art, remember? Let’s go find your crayons.”

Benjamin abandoned his new favorite person with a small pout but did come to his mother.

“This is Harry and this is Ron,” she introduced them and ran a soothing hand through his hair. “They’re Hermione’s friends. Can you say hello?”

Benjamin eyed them with interest but didn’t give up his safe post tucked slightly behind his mother’s leg. One hand he curled into the fabric of her jeans, fingers of the other disappearing into his mouth. “Hello,” he mumbled around his thumb.

Ron was still frozen into silence and Harry didn’t know what to say.

“I’ll be right back,” Kate promised, walking her son out of the room carefully. “You can have some tea. Just,” she waved her hand in the air a bit, “get yourself some more cups.”

Hermione summoned two more cups and set everyone up at the table. Kate had cleared it together with Benjamin, the little boy dutifully carrying his own dishes back into the kitchen and helping to put them into the dishwasher.

“Has she told you anything yet?” Harry asked the moment they sat down.

“She said the father told her his name was Daniel,” Hermione revealed quietly, keeping an eye on the door way. The bedrooms seemed to be up the stairs from the sounds of it and they could hear steps overhead as well as voices.

“I don’t have a brother named Daniel,” Ron pointed out needlessly.

“He told her a fake name, Ron,” Hermione explained the obvious and Ron made a face.

“I really don’t want to think about my brothers like that,” he complained, fixing himself a cup of tea. “I don’t remember her at all, when the hell did she see me?”

“She obviously was on vacation in Egypt at the same time as your family, Ron. She may have been with your brother more than once, maybe they met up at the hotel or somewhere. She could have seen you there.” Just the confirmation of the Egypt trip narrowed it down some but only time wise. Everything else was still open.

“What did he mean with ‘make me fly again’?” Harry wanted to know then.

Hermione avoided his eyes. “He likes magic.”

“It’s Le-vi-o-SA, not Le-vi-O-sa,” Ron mocked her affectionately and got himself a thump to the thigh for it. “Oi!”

“If he told her a fake name, how are we going to find out which one it is?” Harry looked at his two friends. “She recognized you, that’s a start, but…”

“We should have thought to bring a family photograph.” Hermione frowned at that oversight. “We can’t very well ask them to show up here so she can point one out like a line-up.”

“I don’t reckon you could,” Kate agreed, coming back into the room and closing the door.

The three of them clammed up immediately.

“I’ve been thinking if there were any specific traits that I could tell you about to point one out but they’re all just ‘red hair and freckles’.”

“Eye color?” Hermione asked curiously.

“Brown.”

“Not Bill then, he’s got blue eyes,” Ron pointed out.

“Still leaves three of them,” Hermione stated softly. And, technically, his father. Although she was pretty sure that if Kate had seen Ron before and it had been Arthur, which Hermione deemed nearly impossible, Kate would have been aware of the significant age difference. She’d definitely been aware of the age gap between herself and Ron.

“Could I just, I don’t know, go to your Ministry again and you bring them there as well, or something?” Kate suggested. “Not that I liked the place and really want to go back.”

Harry let out a snort. “Can’t blame you.”

Kate regarded him with a look that told Hermione that there was quite a lot that Kate wasn’t saying. She wondered if that had to do with her earlier comment about the magical community not being forthcoming with help regarding Benjamin.

“Maybe that’s not something that should be done in such a public place,” Hermione cautioned. She had no idea, not even an inkling, how any of the possible fathers might react to finding out they had an unknown son. Also, the Ministry had ears and eyes at every corner and the last thing they needed was for this to be splashed across the Daily Prophet the next morning.

“Plus, no one really leaves the house that much. Especially not everyone together,” Ron added in quietly. George hadn’t left the house in weeks and they were not likely to draw him out either. Molly had tried everything and if she hadn’t succeeded…

“So then I’ll come there?” Kate had refilled her cup and was now tracing the rim of it.

“Can we just bring a stranger to the Burrow?” Harry asked hesitantly. “A _Muggle_ stranger?” The Weasleys were welcoming towards everyone but maybe not when they showed up uninvited like that.

“I don’t know how else we could do it,” Hermione replied slowly. No matter which way they turned it, the situation was tricky. It had the potential to be another bomb onto a family that was already deeply in the turmoil the aftermath of a war left behind.

Silence spread over the group while they all considered a solution to the situation. Was there one? Or was this bound to blow up no matter how hard they tried to soften the blow?

“I think we’ll just have to bring her,” Ron said after a while and his face took on a determined look. “We can’t really ask more questions without giving it all away and I think that’d be worse without Kate there to answer questions.”

“Maybe I could go alone first and try to explain? It’ll probably be a shock,” Kate offered slowly.

“No kidding,” Ron snorted. “One look at him and they’ll know it’s true.”

“I think you should bring Benjamin,” Hermione told the young mother softly. It made sense that Kate was hesitant to bring her son to a stranger’s house with a revelation that could very well turn nasty. “Like Ron said, they’ll see it for themselves when they see him.”

Kate nodded curtly. “When?”

“Tonight,” Harry piped up, having been very quiet for a while, observing. “Hermione leaves for school on Tuesday.” That was in three days, the same day that Auror training was officially starting for Harry and Ron.

“If that works for you, that is,” Hermione amended, trying to read Kate’s unreadable face.

“Alright. Give me the address and a time and we’ll be there. I’m bringing Harriet too.”

“Uh, the Burrow is in Devon,” Ron explained sheepishly.

“So Harriet can do that jumping thing that makes everyone sick.” Kate rolled her eyes and the three friends chuckled. Apparating was truly something you had to get used to.

“I can come here and pick you up,” Harry offered. “Then Harriet doesn’t have to side-along two people.”

“Okay,” Kate agreed and just like that they had a time and place when the Weasley family would find out about its newest member.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there is a little more German in this. I hope this translations in the brackets thing works without being (too) disruptive whilst reading. If it is, and/or if you have an idea how to do it better, let me know :)  
> Also, there is a sources/explanation section at the end of this chapter, marked by [1] in the scene where it is relevant.  
> Hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think in the comments, leave a kudo and, if you liked it, subscribe :)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Guck mal, Mama, Tigger kann fliegen!” (Look, mama, Tigger can fly!)

When Kate turned her attention to her son, she expected him to throw his new favorite stuffed toy to make it ‘fly’. She didn’t expect the toy to actually… _fly_.

For a moment she just stared at the plush tiger that was definitely hovering in the air.

The tiger was up in the air.

Benni was pointing his finger at it and the tiger was floating in the air.

She kept staring at it as she stepped closer.

There were no strings attached.

There was no stick holding it up.

There was just her son, pointing his finger at it, and it was flying.

“Benni, was…?” (Benni, what…?) Kate didn’t quite know what to say.

Benni let out a giggle and the toy floated back into his hand. He went back to playing and no matter how hard Kate watched, Tigger didn’t fly again nor any other toys.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

With a child at the age of three, life at home could sometimes be quite tedious. Benni was discovering his own will and the power of his words and sometimes that was very difficult to deal with.

Normally Harriet and Kate worked as a team, instinctively giving the boy the same rules most of the time and having agreed upon the others. Which was why Kate didn’t understand that there definitely was some cola left over in Benni’s cup from dinner. He’d thrown a tantrum about not wanting to drink water for dinner and also they never gave him cola so late in the day because it messed with his sleep schedule. Which Kate could hear because Benni was definitely very loudly unhappy about going to bed tonight two doors over.

“Why did you give him cola?” she wanted to know when Harriet returned half an hour later when it was finally quiet in their flat.

“…I didn’t?” Harriet gave her a confused look.

Kate held out Benni’s cup to her. Harriet took it and Kate could read on her face that she could see the remnants of the caffeinated, sugary drink herself.

“I’m sorry,” Harriet said quickly and left the room.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Benni loved crafts and making art and all that junk. It meant that the living room often exploded into a mess of crayons, paint, glitter and glue which were a hazard to clean up but which also made her little boy so happy so Kate didn’t mind.

Today he was particularly into the glue and glitters, having her draw him shapes then smearing them with liquid glue and sprinkling glitter on it until the paper was entirely covered and the leftover glitter would give them yet another jar of mixed rainbow glitter instead of the neatly separated colors they had started out with. Once more they were out of glitter glue.

“Ui, ui, ui, Benni, guck mal was für eine Sauerei wir gemacht haben,” (Ui, ui, ui, Benni, look what a mess we’ve made) Kate chuckled, showing him her glue and glitter covered hands. “Ah, ah, ah,” she tried to stop him as he hid his giggles behind his hands. When his hands came away from his face, the bottom half was also covered in glitter.

Kate let out a sigh. “Ich hole dann mal einen Waschlappen, ne?” (I’m gonna go and get a washcloth, right?) She pressed a quick kiss to his head and went to the bathroom to wet a cloth to clean them up with.

When she came back to the table, the scene was not like she had left it. Not at all like she had left it.

For one, her son’s face was free of even a single speck of glitter.

The picture they had just completed which had still been covered by extra glitter was now sans extra glitter.

But most of all, the extra glitter was back in its containers. Its color-separated containers.

“Ich hab sauber gemacht, Mama!” (I cleaned up, mama!) Benni declared proudly, showing his also spotless hands to her.

“Ja, das hast du,” (Yes, you did) she replied slowly, shaking her head firmly once as if to wake herself up. “Dann kannst du ja jetzt spielen gehen.” (Then you may go play now.)

Benni cheered and ran off into his room.

“Wie in aller Welt…?” (How on earth…?) Kate picked up each individual container, their picture, even the newspaper she had covered the table with. There was not a single piece of glitter out of place anywhere. There was not a single one that fell off the picture when she lifted and shook it even.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Sending your child to kindergarten was always a challenge and it had been a challenge for Kate and Harriet as well. There was a number of reasons why it made sense and why it was good for him but also plenty that made it difficult.

One of the most striking reasons for it was language. It had never really been a question for Kate whether or not to raise her son with two languages, German and English, since it was clear from the start that Harriet would be helping out with his care. He was learning English from her much the same his mother had.

Since home was a space where they spoke English with Harriet and German between themselves and Benni hadn’t been around other kids his age that much, his German wasn’t as good as it should have been. At least that was what the pediatrician had said. So sending him to a German speaking kindergarten was a chance to both give him a bigger social circle as well as to give him more German language input.

From the first day, Benni had been a darling at the kindergarten. He was a darling with anyone who met him really, Kate acknowledged but would never admit the smugness it sometimes filled her with. He was red haired and freckled and he had her dimples and he was a sweet child with fairly good manners. He made friends so quickly she struggled to keep up with the names and the parents but she was so glad he was doing so well.

Until one Friday which was the only day she was able to pick him up from kindergarten herself as work let out early for the weekend. The other days Harriet picked him up and minded him until Kate got home and was usually treated with an exuberantly happy child jumping into her arms. That Friday afternoon Benni was sitting on the bench very quietly when she came to pick him up and his kindergarten teacher asked to speak with her for a moment, off to the side.

“Ist irgendwas passiert?” (Did something happen?) Kate asked worriedly. She had never seen him sit so quietly and subdued after kindergarten. He was usually bursting with things to tell her about.

“Benjamin hat sich heute etwas daneben benommen,” (Benjamin acted out a bit today) she was told and had to carefully school her features because, what?

“Was hat er gemacht?” (What did he do?)

“Er hatte Streit mit einem anderen Kind und hat eine Vase heruntergeworfen.” (He had a fight with another child and threw down a vase.)

Again, Kate had to keep a good grip on her expression. “Sind Sie sicher, dass die Vase nicht nur runtergefallen ist? Benni weiß, dass er Dinge nicht herunterwerfen darf und er hat das zu Hause auch noch nie gemacht.” (Are you sure the vase didn’t just fall down? Benni knows he’s not allowed to throw things down and he’s never done it before at home.)

That was the moment when Kate really had to cement her face because she received the look from the kindergarten. The Look. The you’re-a-young-single-mother-what-do-you-know look. The look that told her they were taking pity on her, that they thought she couldn’t adequately raise her son because there was no father in the picture. She didn’t even want to imagine the looks she would have received if it had been clear that no father ever would be in the picture.

“Es tut mir leid, ich werde mit ihm darüber sprechen. Kann ich die Vase ersetzen?” (I’m sorry, I’ll talk to him about it. May I replace the vase?) No matter how much she was inwardly boiling about several aspects of all of this, she couldn’t show it. She needed this kindergarten place.

“Ich habe Ihnen bereits eine Rechung vorbereitet.” (I’ve already prepared an invoice for you.) She was handed a piece of paper.

“Danke.” (Thank you.)

The kindergarten teacher nodded and turned to greet another parent then.

Kate pocketed the invoice and took a deep breath before she went to retrieve her son.

Benni was very quiet on the way home. Just like Kate couldn’t really imagine that he had indeed thrown a vase on purpose, she could very well imagine the chastising her son had received from the kindergarten teachers. She hated seeing her cheerful child so subdued and quiet.

When they got home, they took off their outside clothes and Kate went and got them a snack like they always did after getting home from kindergarten. Harriet wasn’t home, she had a tea party with her other British friends every Friday.

“Benni, magst do mir erzählen, was heute im Kindergarten passiert ist?” (Benni, do you want to tell me what happened at kindergarten today?) she asked him softly after taking off his little boots. The weather was turning outside, fall descending upon them.

The question was enough to send Benni into a fit of tears. Kate quickly pulled him into her arms and murmured soothingly to him, trying to calm the upset child.

It took a lot of coaxing to get his side of the story which was that a child in his group had bothered another one and when Benni sided with the bullied child, the first one had turned on him. Benni had told him to stop and somehow the vase had been in pieces on the floor at the end of it. He didn’t know how but he was adamant that he hadn’t thrown it. No one else had believed him though.

Kate believed him, as did Harriet. Harriet brought the money for the vase the following Monday and that was that. But what Kate remembered were her son’s tears and the look on Harriet’s face when she was told the story. It was the same one she had seen a few times on the older woman’s face lately and she didn’t know what it meant.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Fall brought along the cold and the rain, the ever changing weather, but it also brought along nice things, like St. Martin’s Day. The children had spent a few days making their own lanterns for the procession on the afternoon of 11th November [1]. Kate had even taken a half day in order to be able to go with her son, remembering how much she had loved the tradition as a child.

Of course, at three years old Benni’s lantern was heavily assisted by his teachers but it looked very nice in the end. There was a cardboard frame and then transparent paper with a few shapes cut out and stuck onto it to customize it for each child. Benni’s frame was blue as was the transparent paper, no surprises there.

It was a mildly windy day, 11th November, which was not lucky for the candles which were supposed to light up the lanterns. The parents around them had to stop frequently to re-light their children’s lanterns in order to appease their children. Kate never had to re-light Benni’s even once.

“Du musst mir für nächstes Jahr deinen Trick verraten,” (You’ll have to tell me your trick for next year) one mother said to her at the end of the procession and Kate nodded but she had no trick to tell.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

None of it made any sense but the accumulation of it made Kate feel very off and almost like she was losing her mind. She had no rational explanation for any of it, only her gut feeling to go with which told her that she was not imagining things.

It all came to a head about a week after the lantern procession when Harriet took her aside one evening.

“Kate, can I talk to you for a moment?” Harriet asked after they had put Benni to bed. Although no one else was home, the older woman closed the living room door, leaving just a crack so they would hear Benni if he called for them.

“What’s wrong?” Kate asked back, gut twisting at the by now familiar pinch between Harriet’s eyebrows and the seriousness displayed on the rest of the other woman’s face.

“Have you noticed anything… different about Benni lately?”

Kate frowned, stomach turning even more. “Different in what way?”

Harriet pulled something from behind her back and showed it to Kate. It was Tigger, only he wasn’t his usual orange, he was blue.

“How…?” She took the toy and examined it closely. There were no traces of paint or other color, no marks, nothing. It seemed like all the orange parts were now perfectly blue as if they had never been another color. Only Kate knew that Tigger had been orange just this morning before she had gone to work. She immediately thought of floating Tigger.

“He changed it right before my eyes,” Harriet explained slowly.

“Blue is his favorite color,” Kate mentioned absently, still staring at the toy. Finally she looked up and met Harriet’s eyes. “He made him fly a while ago. I thought I’d imagined it but… I don’t understand, Harriet.” What was happening with her son? She felt ready to cry.

The strangest thing about the whole thing was the calmness with which Harriet regarded everything. She didn’t seem the least bit alarmed nor confused or frightened.

“I need to show you something,” the older woman said and took Tigger back. A stick suddenly appeared in her hand which she pointed at the stuffed tiger and a moment later it was back to orange.

“What-“ Kate recoiled, eyes going wide. “How- Is this a trick? Is this a new toy that you got him that does tricks? Harriet?” Kate stuttered, grabbing Tigger and examining him again. Perfectly orange, like he had been in the morning.

“It’s not a trick, sweetie,” Harriet told her kindly and waved the stick. A crayon they hadn’t put away yet lifted off the dining table and floated right into Harriet’s other hand.

Kate’s blue eyes were as wide as they could be as she watched on. Harriet then said some strange words and suddenly the crayon became a cup. Kate’s eyes may as well have popped out of her head. She stumbled back and held up her hands.

“Okay. Okay. Hold on. What is this? What are you doing?” she burst out, unable to believe what her eyes were telling her. She snatched the cup and turned it in her hands but it was a perfectly ordinary cup like they were teaching Benni to use. No trace of the crayon left, except the green color which was exactly the same. This cup was not made of wax, it was solid plastic.

“It’s magic, Kate. I’m a witch and I suspect that Benni is a wizard.”

With that revelation came a whole bunch of other ones and all of them gave Kate a headache. Wrapping her mind around the fact that magic existed, the fairytale kind of magic, the wave-a-wand-and-turn-things-into-other-things-and-make-things-come-to-you-and-more kind of magic, was plenty. Adding the fact that Benni, her small, sweet son Benjamin, was displaying signs of accidental magic, as Harriet had called it, was even more.

They made a list with incidents which they suspected may have been accidental magic. Kate wrote down flying Tigger, the cola for dinner, the cleaned up sparkles, the broken vase, the lantern. Harriet wrote down flying Tigger as well but also added things like color-changing crayons, moving toys (as in walking horses and smiling teddy bears which was just plain out creepy), apple juice turning into orange juice, the clock going back an hour, Benni’s night light being on without being in the socket. Seeing it written down like that made Kate feel physically sick.

“What do we do now?” she asked tonelessly, staring at the list. One of those things, on its own, was strange but not alarming. This was… She swallowed heavily. “Is he- Can he- Do we have to-?” Tears filled her eyes and she stood up, starting to pace. She wanted to go into Benni’s room and wrap him up in her arms so tightly, protect him from whatever strange thing was happening to him.

“He is not sick,” Harriet calmed her warmly. “Nor depraved or strange in any way. He has magic, that is all. I have magic too and I’m still here, I’m perfectly normal.”

Kate gave Harriet a look.

“Alright.” Harriet rolled her eyes. “I appear perfectly normal.”

“That’s more like it,” Kate muttered and both women shared a small, knowing smile.

“Magic isn’t anything bad, Kate, I promise. He just has to learn how to control it.”

Kate nodded slowly and continued pacing. Her son had magic. Honest to God, real magic. He could make things fly, change colors, change drinks, make things explode. She felt a little dizzy with it to be honest.

“There is an international Statue of Secrecy which says that magic cannot be revealed to non-magic people.”

Kate’s head snapped towards Harriet. “What does that mean? I don’t have magic.” A wave of fear welled up in her. Were they- “Are they going to take him away?!” Over her cold, dead body!

Then another thought came to her and she stopped, feeling very, very cold suddenly. Benni had magic, children’s magic but powerful magic. If he could manipulate things at age three, what was Harriet able to do with her magic at age 50? What would other witches and wizards be able to do with their magic? She didn’t have magic. They did. She had nothing to set against them to protect her baby.

Harriet went on, explaining that they weren’t going to take away her son but that very probably German magical authorities were monitoring accidental magic just like the magical authorities did in Britain. That someone may show up and speak to them about it officially. That they would keep an eye on Benni to make sure he didn’t reveal himself to others. That they would have to talk to Benni about it and tell him to try and control it at kindergarten.

Kate listened to all of it and she agreed to talk to her son and to let Harriet teach him how to control himself. She nodded when Harriet insisted that magic was not inherently bad or dangerous. She agreed when Harriet promised she would protect Benni from harm, that he could learn how to deal with his magic from her as she had learned from her own parents.

But after they went to bed and she had checked on Benni one more time, standing at the end of his little bed and watching her little angel sleep so innocently, she pulled a pillow over her face to muffle her crying. Moments later she jumped for the paper bin in her room, throwing up her dinner into it until nothing more came.

It all felt so familiar. The finding out something no one could know. The hiding it from everyone. The learning to control it in public.

Benni was three. He was three. And she now had to teach him how to hide a part of himself. He was three.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Benni loved magic. Once they had explained it to him and he understood the concept as much as a three-year-old could understand it, he was in love with it. He figured out very quickly how to do some of his accidental magic with purpose and flying Tigger became a daily occurrence. Just like Benni begging Harriet to do more magic for him did.

Magic became something that happened at home a lot, mostly so it didn’t happen in public. He seemed to grasp that concept surprisingly well too and it broke Kate’s heart. She tried to be open and non-judgmental about magic at home, tried not to subconsciously teach Benni that magic was scary or weird, but her stomach never relaxed from that tight coil it had curled into the night Harriet had told her. It was down to Harriet that they were able to keep things fairly calm and steady for Benni.

German magical officials did turn up and the conversation, as they called it, was less than pleasant. It helped that Harriet was there and took control of the situation but it was very clear that they were under surveillance now and that Benni would be closely watched for doing more magic in public.

That night Kate pressed her face into her pillow again and threw up in her paper bin. She was trying to be brave for her son but she was scared. The officials hadn’t answered her question what would happen if Benni ever did do more magic, more obvious magic, in public but what wasn’t said stood very clearly in the room. You weren’t to do magic in public in front of non-magicals and if you did, well…

Benni having magic also raised questions about his father again. She hadn’t thought about the man in a while and it was still fruitless to do so. He had been a fling and neither of them had pretended it ever would be more than that. He was British, which was no surprise to anyone who knew her, and he had been on vacation with his family in Egypt at the same time as she had been on vacation there with her uni friends. His name was Daniel and that was about as much as she knew about him.

Only now they did know more about him, at least according to Harriet. There were magical children born to non-magical parents, as she said, but they were rare. She suspected that Daniel was a wizard. Kate wanted to wring his damn neck for making her life even more difficult than being a single mother already made it. She was now a non-magical mother to a magical child. If she hadn’t had Harriet, she wouldn’t have known how to deal with the situation.

The connection to Britain, beyond the connection Harriet already provided for them, was a problem too. Harriet was reluctant to tell Kate but there was no denying that the state of magical Britain was dire. She gave Kate magical newspapers with moving pictures (Benni loved those so much too) when Kate suggested maybe trying to reach out to Britain magical officials in trying to find Benni’s father. Surely that narrowed it down quite some, right?

Only that Britain was in a bad state, a really bad state. What she read in the newspapers essentially was what sounded like something Kate had learned in history at school – World War 2, just with magic. She even went as far as to get a book on World War 2 from the library and what was happening over there was almost a play-by-play from the 1930s/40s, only it was 1997, damn it.

But that wasn’t the worst part of it even. War was always bad and racist people were always bad. But the target. The target. The target of the war raging in Britain? Magical people born into non-magic families.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] Saint Martin’s Day is celebrated in many places in Germany on 11th November. There are different traditions for it but the most common one is a lantern procession, usually with children in kindergarten and elementary school who make their own lanterns in the days leading up to it. In many communities there is also a bonfire.
> 
> You can find a picture and short(er) summary [here](https://willkommen-in-germany.tumblr.com/post/65024511986/laternenumzug-a-german-autumn-tradition-for-the). 
> 
> More about the origin of the day and the German traditions on it [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Martin%27s_Day#Germany).


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so here it is, the big reveal :)  
> I'd love to hear if it is who you thought it was or not. This was pretty much the first decision I ever made for the story and everything else built around it. We'll see how it all turns out.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Kate sat with her eyes closed, taking deep breaths and pressing her thumbs to her index fingers. Inhale, slide her thumb up her index finger towards the tip. Exhale, slide her thumb back down towards the palm. Inhale, up the middle finger. Exhale, down towards the palm. Inhale, up the ring finger. Exhale, down to the palm. Inhale, up the pinky finger. Exhale down to the palm.

She didn’t know how long she had been doing it but she felt marginally calmer when she felt the sofa move at her side and then a small body climbed into her lap. Small arms rested themselves onto hers and she leaned her chin on her son’s head as his breathing matched up with hers slowly.

Together they trailed their thumbs up and down their fingers, timing their breaths to the motion. Slowly but surely a calmness spread over them that Kate and Harriet had been working for very hard for more than half a year.

Dealing with secrets came at a price and that price was anxiety, worry, fear. Things that made innocent, harmless children’s magic turn volatile. Things that made non-magic mamas turn snappy and loud.

It was difficult to find a way to deal with it when the only person Kate could talk to about it was Harriet. But Kate was good at reading so she found some books and she learned so she could teach her son.

Whenever Benni got too anxious, his magic did things he didn’t want it to do and that just made him more anxious. He had described it as his fingers starting to tingle once and that was where this breathing technique came in.

It was difficult to find helpful things and while she searched for those, she came across many others that were not at all helpful. Neither her son nor her were sick, ill, disturbed or disordered in any way, yet some of the books would have put it like that. It wasn’t until she disbanded from the more scientific books and turned to the more alternative or holistic approaches that she found things which resonated with her, which she could learn to teach her son.

When Kate felt calm enough, she opened her eyes and saw that instead of tracing his fingers, Benni had his index finger and thumb pressed together. He was perfectly calm sitting on her lap and it soothed that void in her that had opened when she’d realized that she was no longer equipped to protect her son. She may not have had magic but she could still teach him valuable things in order to handle his magic.

“Woran denkst du?” (What are you thinking of?) she whispered and he opened his eyes, craning his head to look at her. There was a happy smile on his face and that soothed the void in her even more.

“The puppy!” he declared and she had to smile too because she knew exactly what he meant. The couple that lived below them had a new puppy and Benni was enamored with it. Eileen and Liam let him pet the tiny dog, Snoopy, whenever they met and Benni loved running his hands over the soft fur. His giggles when Snoopy would lick his hands or face were the things Kate thought of when she breathed with her index finger and thumb pressed together. [1]

“Machst du dir Sorgen, Mama?” (Are you worried, Mama?) he asked then and she gave a small nod. Benni was perceptive, he could tell when she was stressed or worried. She’d grown up in a family where every negative emotion was glossed over and she didn’t want that for her son. She wanted him to know that being sad, or worried, or angry, was just as much a part of life as being happy, or cheerful, or calm, was. They just had to learn how to deal with each emotion, that was all.

“Ein bisschen,” (a little) she admitted and chuckled when he smushed her cheeks in his hands, pressing a sloppy kiss to the fish mouth he had made her lips form. “Danke. Vielen Dank,” (Thanks. Thanks a lot,) she laughed, wiping her mouth.

Benni giggled. “Bitteschön!” (You’re welcome!) he crowed cheerfully and slid off her lap. “Ich geh’ spielen!” (I’m gonna go play!)

“Okay, aber nur eine Sache! Wir müssen bald los!” (Okay, but only one thing! We have to go soon!) she called after him and them having to leave son was the reason she’d sat down to breathe with her hands, as Benni called it, in the first place.

The past weeks had been challenging in so many ways. Arriving in London and finding a place to stay, finding a job to pay for the place to stay. Contacting the British Ministry of Magic. Hitting twenty kinds of red tape and road blocks because the magical officials were no more helpful than their German counterparts.

And then that young woman in the magical shopping area.

Diagon Alley was a real test for Kate’s nerves. Harriet had taken them there as part of introducing Benni to more magical areas and people, like she had in Berlin. But this magical area was different. There were shops nailed shut. There were shops which still had traces of the fire that had burnt them out. There were shops with broken, missing windows. There were shops that gave her such a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach that she was on the verge of asking Harriet to go home so many times. This magical area showed that there had been a war.

Benni saw none of it. Or he did see, but only the people in the robes he liked so much, he saw the magical ice cream shop, he saw the magic people openly performed on the streets. He didn’t care for the destruction and the heavy atmosphere.

The young woman did her best to blend in but Kate knew how to do that herself. No one else took much note of the woman and Kate wouldn’t have either but she popped up twice in their vicinity and Kate did take note of that.

At first she’d been worried when she realized the focus was on Benni. But with a little observation from her view, she realized that the woman didn’t seem angry or disturbed, she looked curious. And that in turn made Kate curious.

The woman knew something, Kate knew that. The woman was intrigued by Benni and not just because he was a child running around these streets with his obviously Muggle mother. Kate liked the wizarding robes too but she refrained from wearing them because they weren’t for her, were they? She was an outsider, a non-belonger, she was restricted to wearing her jeans and shirts and sneakers that no one else would wear in this community.

Except that woman. She wore jeans and a shirt and sneakers. The same kind of sneakers a woman looking quite different from her wore to the coffee shop a few days later.

The same kind of sneakers another woman passing by the house wore.

Magic could do a lot of things, including changing one’s appearance, Kate had learned that. She was learning a lot of things.

Now she knew that that woman was Hermione Granger, a woman she had read about in the papers more than just a few times, and that the reason why she had been watching Benni and popping up around their house was because she had indeed recognized something in the boy. She now knew that that recognition had to do with Ron, Ronald Weasley, another newspaper name she had read about plenty. And she had also brought Harry Potter whom Kate knew the entire life story of without ever having met him before this day.

While Harriet had brought Benni through the day, making lunch with him, putting him down for a nap, going to the playground with him after the nap, giving him a bath when they came back because he’d covered himself with dirt again, Kate had spent that time digging up each and every newspaper she still had at hand. Her own hand hurt now from collecting each and every small detail she had been able to find in regards to the Weasley family.

Of course, all of that had to be treated with caution. Newspapers never wrote the truth or the whole truth and it was blatantly obvious that prior to the final battle, the coverage had been heavily influenced by those who were now being written about as war criminals. So she took it all with a grain of salt but she did have an outline on the family now.

A big family, as she’d come to realize. Mother Molly, father Arthur, and seven children, all of whom had been involved in the war. All nine of them had been deemed public enemies at one point.

There hadn’t been pictures of all of them so Kate was no further in determining in Benni’s father than she was before. But their faces were familiar, if changed by five years passing and a war between then and now.

She was nervous about going to the Burrow, as Hermione, Ron and Harry had called the Weasley house. She was nervous about facing that tight-knit family, about finding Benni’s father. There were too many possibilities for how it would all go and her anxious mind chose to focus on the more unpleasant ones.

By the time Harry reappeared in order to _apparate_ them to the Burrow, Kate both had a grip on her anxiety and also didn’t. Harriet was apparating Benni to the coordinates Harry gave her and then when Kate took Harry’s offered arm, that awful, awful twisting, turning feeling made her sick to the stomach as Harry brought them there as well.

_There_ was a field by a very tall and pretty crooked house. In fact, it was so crooked that it would have been obvious it involved magic even if Kate hadn’t already known. The front yard was fenced in with a dry stone wall about as high as Kate’s hip as she had often seen in English rural areas. Within the separated area were some beds with flowers and vegetables as far as she could tell as well as an overgrown lawn that wrapped around the house. The shape of the house vaguely reminded Kate of a windmill, a very particular, crooked windmill.

Harriet appeared next to them and Kate reached for Benni’s hand as Harry led them through the gate in the dry stone wall towards the house. There was a weathered sign by the gate, reading THE BURROW.

Just as they passed the gate, the front door opened. Hermione and Ron came out and then also another woman, one Kate recognized the same way she had recognized Ron.

It had been obvious for days that Ron, Hermione and Harry were up to something again and by Ron’s very unsubtle questioning of his brothers and father, it was clear to Molly that whatever it was they were up to had nothing to do with the Ministry. When the three of them had returned in the morning after disappearing without warning nor explanation and then had announced they were having a special visitor before dinner, Molly knew it was all coming to a head.

Neither Weasley parent had had any idea as to why Ron was suddenly so interested in finding out more about the Egypt holiday they had taken five years ago. It felt like such a long time ago and almost insignificant, given everything that had happened since. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened, save the normal shenanigans mostly her sons got up to. Still, since the three of them so adamantly requested everyone’s presence that evening, Molly and Arthur decided to go with it for now.

They hadn’t been given a specific time at which to expect their visitors but when Harry stepped out for a moment while Hermione and Ron remained, looking increasingly nervous, Molly knew that whoever it was, was coming soon. At the familiar popping sound of Apparition, Hermione and Ron hurried out the door and Molly after them.

Kate stopped still when she saw the woman, the mother, Molly, and held Benni’s hand tightly. Harriet came to her side while Harry went towards Molly who was staring first at Kate then at Benni.

“Oh dear,” she whispered finally and Kate swallowed thickly. “Well, I’d suppose you’d better come in,” she addressed Kate and gave a tentative smile. She turned and walked back into the house. “CHARLIE!” they heard her call one of her sounds very loudly and very firmly a moment later.

“Damn it,” Ron cursed quietly while Harry allowed himself a quick grin. A coin changed ownership between them.

“Did you bet on it?” Kate questioned with raised eyebrows, picking up Benni and carrying him towards the front door.

Ron cleared his throat innocently while Harry offered a sweet smile. Kate stared both of them down and held out her hand. Hermione sniggered to herself when Harry dropped the galleon into Kate’s hand after a moment, looking disgruntled. Kate in turn gave a sugary smile and handed the coin to her son who held it like a trophy.

It had been so long since the first time Harry had set foot into the Weasley’s home that he’d forgotten how overwhelming it had been. All the magical knickknacks, the obvious magical extension of the rooms, the homey clutter. He could see it on Kate’s face but it was washed away when the sound of someone thundering down the stairs stopped. Harry looked towards the stairs and there was Charlie.

Molly had obviously recognized Kate as much as Kate had recognized her. How, Kate had no idea. Her and Molly’s son, _Charlie_ according to who Molly had called for going inside, had tried to keep their meetings fairly secret from the others but obviously they hadn’t been as secretive as Kate had thought.

The Burrow was the biggest contrast to other magical places Kate had been to before that there could have been. The British Ministry had been cool, cold even, very clinical. Diagon Alley had been a quaint shopping area with rough patches. This place though, you stepped inside it and from the first moment on you could feel it. This was a _home_.

Looking around and adjusting Benni on her hip, Kate saw a lot. A lot of clutter which put her a little more at ease about the chaos that often reigned her flat, a lot of magical items like a really big pot that was stirring itself and some sort of vegetables that were being chopped by an enchanted knife, and a lot of space that she was quite sure didn’t match up with the outward perimeters of the building.

Molly was waiting by a spiraling staircase on which you could hear someone’s very heavy steps. A man appeared from around the staircase, coming to Molly’s side. Arthur, the family father.

Benni’s father was the one thundering down the stairs and he stopped dead in his tracks on the last steps as soon as he saw her. So dead in his tracks that he nearly fell over.

All eyes were on them, Kate knew that without looking, while her eyes were fixed on him. Still as tall as the last time she’d seen him, less tall than Ron now though. Still red-haired, almost the exact shade of Benni’s hair, but much shorter this time. Still so heavily freckled it almost masked his paleness. Still as attractive as five years prior, or maybe even more attractive as he had visibly matured since then, which was a thought she pushed very far away immediately.

“ _Daniel_ ,” she said, holding his gaze, using the fake name although she now knew better. Ron barely concealed a snort at that.

“Kate,” Charlie replied, taking the last stair and standing on the same level which somehow felt significant although Kate couldn’t explain why. His brown eyes flitted back and forth between her face and Benni’s head. Benni had turned away from his father unknowingly, too entranced by the magical kitchen.

“Mon dieu,” a feminine voice came from behind Charlie and Kate looked around him to see a very beautiful, blonde young woman coming down the stairs with another two of Charlie’s brothers following.

“Told you it’d be obvious once they saw,” Ron meant to whisper to Hermione but since no one else was speaking, everyone heard. His ears went red promptly as Hermione smacked his arm.

“Mama, guck,” (Mama, look,) Benni mumbled into his mother’s shoulder then, pointing to something over her shoulder. Kate turned with him and saw that he was looking at a pot in which something that looked like chocolate pudding was cooking.

“Ohhh, Schokopudding,” she chuckled, kissing the side of his face and stepping closer to the stove so they could check it out better.

“Der Löffel rührt sich selber,” (The spoon is stirring itself,) Benni giggled, tiny finger pointing to the stew being stirred one pot over.

“Das ist Magie,” (That is magic,) she told him with a smile.

“Would you like a taste, dear?” Molly suddenly appeared next to them, summoning a tea spoon and sticking it into the pudding before offering it to Benni. She looked at Benni unsurely, due to the whole situation and probably also due to the fact they had just spoken German.

“Do you want to try, Benni?” Kate repeated the question, giving him another calming kiss.

Benni nodded lightly and accepted the spoon from his grandmother.

“What do you say?” Kate reminded him after he stuck it into his mouth and hummed happily at the taste.

“More!” he declared happily, dimples flashing.

Kate burst into laughter and so did several other people. She heard someone say “He’s a Weasley, alright,” while Molly took back the spoon and filled it a second time.

“Now what do you say, Benni?” she urged him once more.

“Thank you.” Benni smiled his dimpled smile and Kate could see the exact moment Molly Weasley fell in love with her grandson. That part had never been a question.

Molly ushered them into the living room then, just around the staircase, waving for the as yet unnamed brothers, the French (?) woman as well as Hermione, Harry and Ron to make themselves scarce. Only Arthur and Charlie were allowed to come.

“I’ll take Benni,” Harriet offered, reaching over to take the boy.

“We can show you the backyard, Benni, it’s got lots of fun things.” Hermione stepped up, giving Harriet a significant look and then turning to Benni to give him an inviting smile. “We can make things fly again.”

Benni contemplated for a moment but then went to Hermione’s arms willingly.

“Whoop, don’t forget Tigger!” Kate pulled the toy from her bag and Benni smiled, pointing his finger at the stuffed tiger. His mother knew the spiel by now, opening her hand and letting him float it over to himself, without knowing that such a display of magic was uncommon and almost unheard of to the witches and wizards around them, except Harriet of course.

“We’ll stay inside the yard,” Hermione promised Kate as she took Benni outside, Ron and Harry quickly following.

“Let’s have a seat,” Arthur invited them, gesturing to the sofa.

“I’ll make up a pot of tea,” Molly announced quickly as Kate slowly sat with Harriet beside her. Charlie took a seat in an armchair corner to them, his parents across from him when Molly returned with a pot of tea and mugs floating in front of her almost immediately. Magic could be so convenient, Kay thought enviously. Some things you could get done so much quicker with it, like making tea. Maybe she could train her child to make tea for her. Maybe she wouldn’t, she shook her head to herself, maybe she was just a bit overwhelmed by all of it.

“So…” Molly gave a tight smile to the young woman who had turned up on her doorstep with who Molly was quite sure was her first grandchild.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] This mindfulness technique appears in a children’s book called _The Magic Moment_ by Niall Breslin (2018). You can find it [here](https://www.gillbooks.ie/childrens/the-magic-moment-pb).


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this one we learn a little more background on Charlie and Kate, and Benni and Kate are basically inducted into the Weasley family.
> 
> I have to admit I'm a little disheartened by the lack of response on this story, especially on the last chapter with the revelation. Fanfiction lives from the symbiosis between writers and readers and I think no writer can deny how motivating it is to communicate with the readers. Please, if you like reading this story (for example if you've subscribed to it), consider leaving a comment and let me know what you think. Thank you.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Outside they could hear the voices of Hermione, Ron and Harry mixed with Benni’s much higher one as well as some laughter and squeals of delight from the child. Kate made herself not think about what exactly the three were up to with her son out there in order to make him scream with laughter but she suspected it probably had to do with flying in some way or another. Even months on, that was his favorite kind of magic by far.

Inside, things were much less fun and she almost felt tempted to ask if she could be excused, Molly’s watchful gaze made her that motherly pinned into place. It was clear that no one knew how to start.

“So, his name is Benni?” Molly asked finally and it was like everyone had a breath of relief that finally the awkward silence was broken.

“Benjamin. Or Benyamin, as we pronounce it in German,” Kate explained quickly, nodding. “I call him Benni as a nickname most of the time though.”

“Good name,” Molly allowed with another tight smile and took a sip of her tea while sending her husband a look.

“How old is he exactly?” Arthur presented the next question.

“His birthday is the 8th of April 1994,” Kate answered just as promptly.

“And you are su-?“

Charlie cut off his mother’s question with surprising sharpness. “He’s obviously mine, Mum,” he told her resolutely, looking like he was just refraining from rolling his eyes. “You’ve seen him.”

Kate bit her lips to keep her smile to herself at the way Molly’s mouth comically snapped shut at that. Charlie gave her a knowing look.

“I think Kate and I have got this between ourselves,” he announced then and stood up. Kate followed promptly. “I’ll show you the orchard.” He held out an arm for her and she took it, curling her hand around his _very muscular_ forearm, feeling almost a little amused at how this was playing out. She’d prepared herself for the family court but this was a lot nicer, she found.

Hermione, Ron and Harry looked no less surprised than the Weasley parents had when Charlie led her past the backyard and through some high trees that seemed to outline some sort of playing field. There were no markings nor goal posts for football though so Kate suspected it had some sort of magical purpose.

“I have a son.” It was no question, it was a statement. A somewhat bewildered statement but a statement nonetheless.

“ _We_ have a son,” Kate corrected softly and Charlie turned to look at her. She stood calmly as he took her in, eyes traveling up and down her body.

Just like he looked older, so did she. Her hair was still that honey color that he could never tell if it counted as blonde or brunette. Her eyes were still so blue and as she pressed her lips together, he had a flashback to… The exact way Benjamin had come into being.

“You said 1994, so that means he’s four?” That made sense since they’d been in Egypt in 1993 and it took nine months for human babies to hatch, or be born. Summer 1993 did put them to spring 1994 that way, didn’t it.

Kate nodded. Charlie started to pace in front of her, shoving his hands into his trousers which seemed to be made of some kind of heavy fabric like he worked a job that demanded some protective clothing. His broad shoulders and the strain his arms gave the sleeves of his t-shirt certainly suggested so. There were some marks on his arms though that hadn’t been there five years ago. They looked like scars or burns, maybe even some sort of strange tattoo, she couldn’t really tell. If non-magical people had tattoos, surely magical people had an equivalent?

“Four and a bit, like I said, 8th April is his birthday. He was born a few days before due date but not by much.”

Charlie nodded and continued walking up and down, running a hand through his hair. It was shorter than she remembered, she’d liked his ponytail. She still liked that on a man. There was a reason she’d sought him out whilst on vacation…

“How are you here? How did you find me?” he wanted to know next and now Kate was the one running a hand through her hair. “He’s got magic, obviously.”

“Oh, does he,” she snorted, shaking her head. “I found you _because_ he has magic actually. He…” She thought about what to say for a moment. She’d thought about all of this earlier but now none of it was left in her mind. “Last summer he started showing signs of what I guess is called accidental magic. There wasn’t much accidental about it though, he uses it quite determinedly to be honest. Anyway, he made things fly, cleaned up his messes unexplainably, turned his dinner water into cola, and stuff like that.”

Charlie let out a small laugh at that.

“I know, right?” Kate smiled to herself at the memory. “One night Harriet talked to me about it after he’d turned his favorite toy another color and I found out that the woman who’d babysat me and took me in when my family… well, I’ve known her all my life but I never knew she was a witch.”

“There’s a Statute of-“

“Secrecy, I know,” she cut him off and let out a sigh. “That was last year, Dan- _Charlie_.” She gave him a look, he gave her a sheepish smile. “I’ve learned a lot since, about magic, about accidental magic, about very unhelpful magical officials. About the war that just ended here.” She swallowed thickly, she’d been so terrified that the war would come to continental Europe. “So when Harriet heard the war was over, she thought we should come to London and try to find out about you from the British Ministry of Magic. Only they weren’t being any more helpful than the Germans so that was… a little bit annoying.” He got the distinct feeling that she’d wanted to use a different phrase and that made him remember that she’d had quite a mouth on her back in Egypt. Obviously much had changed since.

“So how _did_ you find me?” What she was telling him made sense but still had nothing to do with him yet.

“Hermione.” Kate smiled shortly. “She saw Benni while we were shopping and she knew he was a Weasley, I guess.”

“And she told you?” His eyebrows rose.

Kay chuckled to herself. “Not exactly. I guess you could say we were sussed out by her, Ron and Harry the past few weeks,” she announced cheerfully while Charlie gaped at her.

“They did what?”

“I think the most important part is that they did speak to me in the end, this morning actually, and now I’m here. And now you know.”

Charlie was quiet for a while, still walking back and forth, as he let all of that run through his head. Kate let him, she knew that it was a lot to take in.

When Molly Weasley called one of her sons down with that voice? You better brought your ass down there as quickly as possible and all of them knew it. It didn’t matter that he was 25 years old, it didn’t matter that he didn’t live at home with his parents anymore, it didn’t matter that he was a fully certified dragon keeper all the way in Romania, it didn’t matter he had fought in a war. When his mother called him like that, he came. Immediately.

While he jumped down the stairs at break neck speed, he considered what it was that could have his mother call upon him like that. He wasn’t aware of any misdeeds that would garner that kind of tone but maybe one of his brothers had put something on him again that was actually their responsibility to own up to. Even if they were now all of age, that still happened frequently.

It wasn’t something that was one of his brothers’ responsibilities though and he saw that as soon as he got view of the kitchen. In which a woman stood that he hadn’t seen in years. Holding a child whom he had never seen. He almost face planted from the last steps as he connected the girl he’d spent a few nights with in Egypt and the red-haired child she was holding. Merlin’s saggy bollocks.

While his mother offered the child, a boy?, some of the chocolate pudding that was supposed to be dessert at dinner, Charlie couldn’t stop staring at Kate. And the child in her arms. His child. His son.

Kate looked a little older, much like he probably did, and the child in her arms looked vaguely… under six? He wasn’t good with children. How long had it been since Egypt? Five years? Five then? He wasn’t sure.

Everyone laughed when the boy asked for more pudding when Kate wanted him to say thank you instead and Bill commented how that qualified him as a Weasley, alright.

Charlie’s parents then made everyone leave, Hermione taking the boy outside and Bill and Fleur most definitely staying on the stairs to listen in. Kate had brought another woman who sat with her as they awkwardly took seats on the sofas in the living room and all he could think was that he was definitely not getting his questions answered while his nosy mother was around. He took Kate to the orchard instead where they could talk, just between the two of them.

He had a child. A son. A four year old son. Who he hadn’t known about because his mother was a German Muggle he’d had a… an affair? fling? with whilst on a family vacation in Egypt. Ron’s sudden interest in that vacation made sense now and for a moment Charlie wanted to find his brother and beat him for not just coming out and voicing his suspicion right away.

Subconsciously he turned towards the backyard where the three adult voices could still be heard mixing with the child voice, his child’s voice. His child. He could barely wrap his head around it.

He’d liked Kate a lot back then and he had thought of her a few times after they went separate ways as their vacations ended respectively. She’d been fun to be around and, well, they’d spent more than one night together so that had been fun too. But now he had a child from that and he didn’t really know what to think of that.

“Do you still live in Germany?” he asked, trying to think of something logical to say because everything else that was going on in his head just made no sense.

“I don’t really know.” Kate gave a shrug.

“How do you not really know where you live?” He frowned at her. She had a child and she didn’t know where she lived? What was that supposed to mean?

“Well, we had sort of decided to move to England this summer when we decided to try and find you. We didn’t think it would happen so fast and my job didn’t really allow me to take off so much time so the only option was to kind of make it a more permanent thing. For a while. Now, I don’t know.” She gave another shrug and he figured that made sense so far. “We have a flat in London at the moment.”

He nodded slowly.

“Where do you live? Here?” She gestured to the Burrow.

“At the moment,” he replied, using the expression she had just used herself. She didn’t argue for more information but he did see a small curl of her lips. “We all came home because of the war and now…” They were all sort of sticking around trying to find their footing again. Besides, it probably wasn’t the cleverest idea to tell the mother of the child he had just found about that he actually lived in Romania where he was working with dragons. That wasn’t going to go down well, he couldn’t imagine.

Neither of them really knew what else to say then and eventually Kate suggested going back to the house. They retrieved Benni and the trio on the way, the boy excitedly telling his mother about the fun they had had in the backyard. Apparently that included gnome chasing and a whole lot of being _levitated_. The delight on Benni’s face made Charlie smile himself, he seemed like a pretty easy-going child so far.

Inside Molly had set the table for dinner already and she and Harriet were standing by the stove together. Harriet gave Kate a questioning look who gave a nod and a smile back. She was alright, so far.

“Harry, could you be a dear and call everyone down? Ginny’s just come home as well, she’s freshening up upstairs,” Molly asked him with a smile.

“Of course.” Harry nodded and went up the stairs, Ron and Hermione following as they claimed having to freshen up themselves.

“Is it alright for him to sit on the bench? I’m sure we can transfigure him a proper chair if he needs it,” Molly addressed Kate who looked a little startled for a moment.

“Uh, he can just sit on my lap.”

“Alright, dear.” Molly gave her a warm smile. “I hope he likes stew but I can whip up something for him quick if he doesn’t, no problem. Stew was always a bit of a hit and miss with my boys.” She gave Charlie an affectionate look who pretended not to have noticed as grown men did when their mother looked at them like that.

“He’s actually not too picky. He doesn’t like cabbage though,” Kate told the surprisingly welcoming woman. “You don’t like cabbage, do ya, Benni?” she said to her son who made a gagging sound and stuck out his tongue comically. Everyone laughed.

“Well, we still have the chocolate pudding if he doesn’t like it at all, I guess,” Molly allowed with a soft smile towards her grandson.

“Choco pudding!” Benni cheered happily and came to her side to peer at the pots but he was much too short.

Charlie was the one to step up and lift him so he could have another look into the pots and Kate was pretty sure that everyone was aware that this was the first time father was holding son. Benni looked contemplative for a moment, whether or not he liked being lifted by this man he didn’t know, but then he settled, still entranced with the self-stirring spoons. He did also wrap an arm around Charlie’s neck and when he’d looked his fill turned to his father.

“Like me,” Benni noted, carefully pinching a lock of Charlie’s red hair between his fingers.

“I’ve got hair like you too,” a female voice joined in and the young woman Kate knew to be the youngest Weasley stepped forward into Benni’s field of vision. “Look.” She offered a lock of her own hair for her nephew to examine.

“Me too!” Ron was not to be left out and another brother lined himself up as well. It was all most comical but also so sweet that Kate had a lump in her throat watching them.

“Alles okay?” (Everything okay?) Harriet had come to her side and took her hand gently.

“Ich glaube schon,” (I think so) Kate whispered back and met Harriet’s hazel eyes. Although not related by blood, people generally accepted Harriet as Benni’s grandmother, possibly because of their similar eye color.

“Wir kriegen das hin,” (We’ll figure it out) Harriet promised and Kate nodded. They’d figure it out, just like they had figured it out for the past five years.

Dinner with the Weasleys was interesting to say the least. With so many people it was a lively affair and even more so since every Weasley seemed very invested in getting Benni to talk to them or respond to them in some way. They all introduced themselves to Kate and so she learned that the young woman was called Ginny, the brother with the long hair and scars in his face was Bill and then the one that seemed a little hesitant was Percy. There was another one, who sat at one end of the endless table and ate quietly, only looking up occasionally. From the newspapers Kate knew his name was George and he was the one who had lost his twin. Her heart went out to him for that.

Being the center of attention to so many people was quite overwhelming to such a little boy and Kate could tell quickly when he wouldn’t really eat much. Another lump-in-throat moment was when she looked up and met Molly’s eyes who provided a bowl of chocolate pudding mere moments later. It was so different being around another mother like this. Harriet had never had her own children although a case could be made for her raising Kate, at least in part.

The pudding went down better, Benni cradling his bowl and smearing half his face with the dessert as Kate sat him on her lap a little more sideways to shield him a little more. It seemed like the Weasleys could tell he was overwhelmed too because conversation turned away from him then and focused on her. She wasn’t sure if that was much better.

“So, Kate, you know Charlie from…?” Ginny was quite direct with her questions, Kate could already tell. Also, Harry had a very, very serious case of stars in his eyes for the redhead, that much was damn sure. Not that Ron was far behind, doting on Hermione. Bill and his wife Fleur were obviously a more settled couple who did exchange sweet looks between them and little whispered conversation but weren’t nearly as obvious as the other two couples. Molly and Arthur had that air about them that long term couples had who had lived through a lot together and come out on the other side still together.

“Egypt, Gin, do keep up,” Ron quipped at his little sister who gave him a look. And possible a kick under the table from the wince on his face a moment later. Yes, Ginny was one to watch out for, Kate noted.

“And what is it that you do?”

“She’s German,” Charlie supplied but Ginny wasn’t much impressed with that.

“Being German is not a job,” she told him impatiently.

“Right now I work at a coffee shop at the corner of where we live in London,” Kate explained before the siblings could turn it into a real fight. She helped Benni with his cup which was filled with pumpkin juice, something neither of them had ever had before but Benni immediately loved. Grandma Molly’s house was already off to a good start. “In Germany I worked as a secretary.”

“I thought you were studying something at university?” Charlie questioned with some surprise.

“Medicine.” Kate nodded shortly. “Going to university after I had Benni didn’t work out,” she explained carefully and saw that Benni’s bowl was empty. “Do you want some more?”

“Kann ich was davon haben?” (Can I have some of that?) he asked in a small voice, pointing at her plate. She refrained from rolling her eyes too much and handed him her spoon, helping him sit more on her knees so he could reach the stew better. Molly gave her a new spoon shortly after.

“I think he likes stew after all,” Kate told Molly with a small smile.

“No one can resist Mum’s cooking,” Ron stated around a mouthful of said stew.

“Close your mouth, Ronald,” Hermione hissed at him, rolling her eyes. He smiled dopily and continued to eat.

“And what is it that you do, Ginny?” Kate returned the favor. “School?”

Apparently that was not a good thing to mention because everyone kind of winced. Kate looked to Harriet who made a chagrined face.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-“

“It’s alright, dear,” Molly assured her quickly but her face showed that painful tinge as well.

“I still have one year of school left but it’ll be much different now. Not all parts have been repaired yet,” Ginny answered graciously.

Kate looked to Harriet for more help and the older woman mouthed something at her. It took her a moment to find that word. Hogwarts. Of course. Hogwarts was the school and the place of the big battle and… Kate just barely caught herself before she looked at George. The twin had died there, she remembered now.

“I’ll be going back as well,” Hermione added, trying to give Kate an encouraging smile of sorts. It came out a little lopsided but the intention was there. It wasn’t Kate’s fault she didn’t know a lot of things about the magical world, was it? Hermione felt a great urge to help the other woman learn and understand this world. “Harry, Ron and I didn’t attend last year.”

Kate nodded quickly, it’d been mentioned the three of the had been on the run for a long time and that made sense. Everyone had had it out for Harry, hadn’t they? Reconciling the young man she’d read about with the one sitting across from her at this dinner table would take her a bit.

“Ron and I are starting Auror training instead,” Harry offered up freely.

“Auror?” Kate looked to Harriet once more.

“Wizarding police,” Harriet supplied at the same time as Ron said: “Dark wizard catcher.”

“The ministry has waived the need for NEWTs for those who fought in the war,” Arthur helped along and although Kate had no idea what NEWTs were supposed to be, she wasn’t going to ask now. She was good at making mental lists of questions and then getting answers from Harriet later.

“Bill is a Curse-Breaker,” Fleur added in with a proud smile to her husband.

“That sounds… fun.” Kate really rather preferred to blend out all the nasty ways magic could be employed. Changing colors, making things fly, covering everyone in a shower of sparkles, that was the kind of magic she liked. Not the kind of magic Bill probably dealt with though.

“And Charlie over here is a dragon tamer,” Bill revealed on behalf of his first younger brother, clapping him on the shoulder.

Kate’s jaw dropped and Charlie was ready for something very different than what actually came out of her mouth.

“Does that mean dragons are real?!” She gaped at him with a wide open mouth. As per usual Benni found it funny to try to stick his hand into any open mouth within reach but she caught his little hand before he could like it was second nature to her.

“They are,” Charlie confirmed slowly.

“Where are they? Can I see them?!” Kate’s excitement took over her entire face and she was leaning forward like she was ready to jump right over the table and run out the door to see the creatures.

There was a variety of reactions to her reaction. Molly deflated slightly, having hoped the new addition to the family would maybe help her convince her second eldest to seek a less dangerous profession. Bill unabashedly laughed, liking his nephew’s mother even more already. Hermione was smiling to herself, very familiar with the excitement that the newness of the magical world could bring with it, as was Harry. Ginny was smirking from ear to ear, just then deciding this lady was quite alright.

And Charlie. Well, he looked ready to leap over the table as well but for entirely other reasons.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are with a new chapter.  
> As inspiration has been a little wonky with this story, I can't keep up my weekly update schedule but I hope I can stick to every two weeks. Fingers crossed for another bout of inspiration that makes a few chapters flow out of my fingers like magic ;)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“What are you doing?!” Kate whisper-yelled, mindful of the sleeping child she had just put down on the sofa and whom Charlie was suddenly pointing his wand at. Or he had, because the wand was now in Kate’s hand, snatched from his grasp rather roughly.

Dinner had lasted longer than Benni had energy for but he had done alright, content to stay on his mother’s lap where he fell asleep while the adults continued to talk. There were so many more questions Kate had answered and asked and the only reason she had been fine with that had been because they came from a place of honest curiosity and not malice or judgment.

Molly had suggested putting Benni down to sleep in Charlie’s room which Kate had declined. She didn’t want him out of her sight in a magical house she didn’t know but most of all, she didn’t want him to get scared if he woke up in a strange place without his mother in sight. Charlie had suggested one of the sofas then, enlarging it magically while Kate carried their son over. And then he had pointed his wand at the sleeping child and that was just not on.

Charlie gaped at her, snatching a wizard’s wand was unheard of and yet Kate, who had absolutely no use for what was essentially a stick to her, had ripped it right out of his hand. And she didn’t look like she was going to give it back easily either.

“I was just going to do a barrier charm so he couldn’t roll off,” he explained slowly, holding out a hand for his wand back.

“Do not point a wand at my son without asking,” she hissed at him, pushing it back into his hand and turned on her heels back to the table where everyone else was pretending not to have seen.

Some more time later found Charlie enlarging the sofa a second time so that Kate could fit onto it as well. He hid his grin when she patted down the extra length to feel if it was really as sturdy as it looked, and it was.

Benni was still peacefully slumbering while Charlie showed Kate the bathroom on the first floor and brought her some clothes to sleep in. While she changed and got ready for bed, he took the bedding his mother had left out for Kate before his parents went to bed.

Their circle had dwindled slowly but surely, George being the first to go. Percy followed, then Molly and Arthur. At that point Harriet had gone home as well. The trio plus Ginny, Bill and Fleur had stuck around much longer, the married couple being next to go. It hadn’t been too easy at the end there, Kate telling a few stories about Benni’s first magical attempts and general childhood stories which they had followed up with stories of their own. Only that most stories involved a brother that was no longer there. It had been Ginny who had pointed out that remembering Fred was important and that although it hurt, they shouldn’t stop telling his stories. So they had reminisced about him for a bit until it got too much. Now everyone was going to bed and for once Charlie couldn’t wait for the next day to begin.

Over the course of the story telling, of course Kate had found out that the dragons weren’t anywhere in England. She hadn’t let on much when she heard about Romania but he’d seen a quick glimpse of something that couldn’t be good. He had no idea when he was going to go back, when he _had_ to go back, but they could only do without him for so long at the reserve. He wanted to spend as much time with his son as he could. How he was going to do that when he had to go back, he had no idea.

Charlie’s clothes were pretty oversized on Kate but she liked it. She liked the comfort of big clothes that swallowed you right up. Most of all she liked the sweater paws the long sleeves gave her. The bathroom he had shown her was a little weird, no buttons anywhere in sight, only magical appliances that did their thing unprompted. She was just glad that the toilet flushed and the water at the sink went on without her needing magic.

“You don’t happen to have a spare toothbrush, do you?” she asked, coming back around the staircase but stopped short. Charlie was kneeling by the enlarged sofa, tucking a blanket around Benni. She knew that look on his face, it was the awe of such a small human existing and the marvel that a heart could contain such big love for such a little person. It made her own heart squeeze and something settled in her. Charlie would be good for Benni, she was sure.

“Hey,” she said quietly, coming to the side of the sofa bed, and touched Charlie’s shoulder lightly. He put his over hers before she could take it away and squeezed.

“Thank you,” he murmured, eyes still fixed on the red-haired little boy sleeping soundly on the family sofa. “For finding me.”

Kate nodded although he couldn’t see and squeezed his hand back. “I only did it so I could give you payback for the birth because let me tell you, that was not fun.” Charlie’s lips pulled into a smile as he looked up at her then.

“Gonna have to make it up to you then, huh?” His brown eyes sparkled with the mischief she still remembered so well.

“I guess so.” She grinned and let go of his shoulder. Muscular forearm, muscular shoulders, five years had done well on this man but she was not going to think about it, nope.

Charlie straightened up then, standing and running a hand through his hair. “I’m on the second floor if you need me. Sharing with George.”

Kate nodded lightly. “He’s not doing so well, is he.” It wasn’t really a question.

“It’s hard.” The look on Charlie’s face was one that told of the hardships the family had encountered, probably not just in the last few months but in the last few years. As far as she had gathered, they had been right in the midst of it all the whole time. Although the war was over now, that didn’t mean it all went away like that. She knew a thing or two about having to deal with the aftermath of a collapse like that.

“Do you have-“ She cut herself off. She’d just met this family again today, it wasn’t her place to barge in and make suggestions like that.

“Do I have what?” He looked at her attentively.

“We have, well, in the Muggle world we have therapists who can help with… grief, trauma, dealing with things you might experience in a war?” she offered slowly, trying to read on his face if she was overstepping. “They’re really helpful.”

“We call them mind healers.” He gave a shrug. “Not so good at talking or asking for help, the lot of us,” he admitted with a sweeping gesture.

“Well, not talking about it is going to make you sick, let me tell you,” she replied dryly.

He looked at her differently then, searching for something in her face. “Will you?” he asked quietly. “Tell me? Sometime.”

She regarded him for a moment. “You already know some of it…”

“So your girl-“

“I came to London with Harriet and Benni,” she cut him off and he figured that was all the answer he was going to get for now.

“And now you’ve got us,” he tried to cheer her up, giving her the Weasley grin.

It worked, a smile spread on her lips and she nodded. “And now I’ve got you crazy lot.”

“You’ll love us,” he promised and pulled her into his arms unexpectedly. “You’re part of the family now, Katie.”

She nodded weakly, lump forming in her throat. She closed her eyes firmly when she felt him press a kiss to her temple.

“Good night,” he told her, pulling back and clearing his throat.

“Good night, _Daniel_.” There was a mischievous glint in her blue eyes as she used his fake name.

“I’d have preferred if my mother hadn’t found out about _that_ ,” he groaned and she openly laughed at him.

“I found you anyway, you can’t hide from me,” she taunted him cheerfully. “I may only be a Muggle but I’ve got my ways.”

“You sure do.” He gave her a look and then he booked it out of there before he had any other, dumb ideas.

Kate watched him leave and then slid under the extra blanket Charlie had supplied, curving her body around her son like she had done so many times before. With a smile as she remembered him examining everyone’s red hair she fell asleep.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Waking up early in a magical household sucked. At least if you asked Kate. There wasn’t a damn thing she could do by herself in that damned magical kitchen and it set her on edge right as the day started. She would have loved some tea, or coffee, but unlike in the bathroom she couldn’t even get the tap to cooperate and get a glass of water. Letting out a slow, deep breath she looked back to her son who was still peacefully slumbering.

“Morning.”

She jumped when suddenly someone spoke and when she turned she saw that one of Charlie’s brothers had come down. Percy, she remembered after a moment.

“Good morning,” she replied slowly and watched him fill a kettle with water, setting it to boil on the stove. Naturally, everything cooperated for him and he didn’t even have to use his wand.

“Tea?” he asked shortly and she decided to put that down to him not being a morning person for her own peace of mind.

“Yes, please.”

Percy put out two cups and a bottle of milk came flying to him as well as the sugar bowl. Moments later he added the pot of tea and sat down. Kate followed suit.

“Yesterday you said that some people at the Ministry hadn’t been very helpful,” he said as he fixed his own cup with a flourished splash of milk and half a spoon of sugar. Very particular, down to the way he stirred the tea afterwards, Kate noted and swallowed down her smile about that, and her surprise at the topic he had brought up.

“I suppose people are still a bit… wary,” she replied cautiously.

“They shouldn’t be,” he told her rather gruffly. “Who did you speak with?”

Kate looked at him, feeling some more surprise rise in her. He looked back, face almost expressionless, waiting. “I don’t recall all the names,” she admitted sheepishly. “I’ve got some papers at home?”

“May I see them?”

She nodded slowly.

“If there’s anything else you need from there, let me know.”

She eyed him a moment longer then lifted her cup to her lips. “Okay.”

He nodded curtly and they drank the rest of their teas in silence.

Charlie was the next one down, creased and ruffled from sleep. He sort of hummed at them in greeting and Kate hid her smile behind her cup. She was not as successful when he brought his own cup of tea over to the den and sat in the armchair next to the enlarged couch, sleepy and slightly grumpy face softening as he watched his son wake up.

Percy got up then, giving Kate another short nod, and minutes later he left. Through the fireplace. Kate tilted her head and made a sound to herself.

“Huh.”

“It’s called floo network,” Charlie explained, coming to the large dining table with both his cup and Benni who whined to be transferred to his mother as soon as he caught sight of her. Charlie handed the boy over and Benni snuggled into her collarbone.

“Hallo Spatz,” (Hello sparrow [a term of endearment for children]) she said to him quietly, kissing the top of his messy hair. “Willst du was trinken?” (Do you want to drink something?)

Benni pushed his face into her neck and she chuckled to herself. That was a no.

“Floo? Network?” She looked at Charlie who was sitting on the same side as her, having turned his chair so he could face her. “Through the fireplace?”

“It’s easier than apparition. Don’t necessarily need magic for it, just floo powder. Throw it in, say where you’re going, poof.”

Kate blinked. “So I could use it?”

He gave her a quick smile and nodded.

“And it’s not got this twisty-turny thing?”

He laughed quietly. “No twisting and turning.”

“Hallelujah,” she commented dryly. “I hate apparating. Makes me sick.”

“Makes most people sick. Prefer flying, myself.”

Her eyebrows rose. “You can levitate yourself?”

He chuckled. “No. On brooms.”

“Of course. Witches and wizards fly on brooms.” She shook her head to herself. There was some overlap between real witches and wizards and then fairytale or folklore witches and wizards, but she was quickly learning that you could never be sure where that overlap was.

“Can take you for a ride later,” he offered and there was a whole lot between those words that she was choosing to ignore for now.

“You can take Benni for a ride. He loves flying.”

By now Benni was more awake and nodded eagerly, sitting up on his mother’s lap.

Charlie smiled at his son warmly. “We’ll go for a fly after breakfast, okay?”

“I would sure hope so,” Molly’s voice came from the stairs and the woman went right into bustling about the kitchen to fix breakfast. “No flying before breakfast.”

Kate hid her grin in Benni’s hair, familiar with that tone and the mutinous look on Charlie’s face as he got told by his mother in his mid-twenties. He gave her a dark look when he noticed but she just stuck her tongue out to him.

One by one the rest of the family came downstairs, some of them probably enticed by the delicious smells that were starting to fill the kitchen as Molly cooked up a storm. She refreshed the tea pot and gave some of them little jobs to do, like setting the table. Benni got to help too, providing each place with cutlery.

George came down looking like he hadn’t slept and Kate’s heart went out to him. The others left him alone, only a worried but also somewhat disapproving look from Molly went towards him. He sat down and didn’t say or do anything afterwards.

Benni ran around the table, bringing first knives, then forks, then teaspoons to every place from where Molly had put a small stool so he could reach the drawers with the cutlery. His little face showed how happy he was to do this which made everyone else around them smile as well. Except George.

When Benni was done and had received ample praise from Molly, he slowly rounded the table and approached where George was sitting at the other end of it. Bill and Fleur had just come down so attention was mostly away from him but Kate had her eyes on him wherever he went. The boy came up to George’s chair with a thoughtful expression and tapped his uncle’s knee lightly. George’s unseeing gaze went to the little person at his side slowly.

“Are you sad?” Benni asked in his little children’s voice and looked up at his uncle, unaware that everyone else in the kitchen had ceased moving.

George stared at his nephew for a moment then nodded slowly.

Benni tilted his head lightly. “Does it hurt here?” he asked again and put his little hand on his own chest, over his heart. Kate felt a lump grow in her throat and blindly sought out someone to grasp onto, her hand finding Charlie’s arm and squeezing.

George nodded again.

“That’s okay,” Benni told his uncle with the kind of compassion only a child was able of. He then ran away from the table, only to return a moment later holding Tigger in his hands. “I get sad too,” Benni told his uncle and showed him Tigger. “But Tigger helps me.” He arranged the soft toy so the tiger was sitting on George’s lap and then climbed onto the chair next to him. “I’m hungry!” he declared, picking up his fork.

Kate pressed her face into Charlie’s shoulder, choking on a teary laugh and she could see that she wasn’t the only one with tears in her eyes. Molly recovered first, wiping her cheeks quickly.

“Well, then we best feed you quickly, young man,” she announced and distributed several pans and bowls onto the table.

Kate swallowed thickly and before she could let go, Charlie slid his hand around hers, giving it a soft squeeze. Their eyes met and he gave her a small smile, eyes sad. She nodded and squeezed his hand back before she let go.

Everyone was still fascinated with Benni and it showed. For a while he chattered about breakfast, and what he usually liked to eat for breakfast, and a few things that had happened recently, and about the playground they had gone to, and about his favorite things when asked a few questions. Eventually he wound down though and slid off his chair, coming around the table to sit on his mother’s lap again.

After breakfast Molly asked if he wanted to help her again so he dutifully carried over some cups and plates to the big sink. The others helped out by handing him the items from the table. A few times back and forth he was tired of it though and stood to the side, watching the sponge and the brush working on the dishes all on their own. As it often had lately, his thumb found its way into his mouth, a habit Kate was monitoring but not inhibiting. Another mother in the house thought differently.

“Such a nasty habit,” Molly tutted at her grandson and pulled his hand from his mouth, then tapped both thumbs with her wand. Kate was already out of her seat before Benni stuck his thumb back into his mouth but immediately pulled it out, gagging.

“What did you do?” Kate snapped at the older woman, grabbing her wand and chucking it away from them. It landed somewhere at the other end of the room with a clatter.

The young mother plucked her son from the ground and held him to herself protectively. He looked bewildered that his thumb was now tasting bad and on the verge of crying. She rubbed his back soothingly and inspected his thumbs but there was nothing visible. “What did you do?!”

“It’s just a simple spell, dear,” Molly assured her in her flabbergasted but motherly soothing tone. It did not soothe Kate at all. “Helps break that nasty habit.”

Kate’s eyes blazed with anger. “Do not ever do magic on my son unasked again,” she snarled and shielded her son away from his grandmother. “ _I_ am his mother and _I_ decide which habits of his are nasty or not. And sucking his thumb to soothe himself while a lot is going on around him is neither nasty nor forbidden.”

Molly spluttered while Kate turned away to leave. Realization settled in with heavy frustration when she remembered that they were somewhere in Devon and had arrived by magical means. Means she could not employ herself. Clutching her son to her chest and not meeting the eyes of anyone else that had witnessed the scene, she marched over to the fireplace, grabbed a good handful of powder from the pot Percy had used earlier, threw it into the fireplace, stepped into the green flames and very firmly demanded: “Ministry of Magic!”

A moment later they were gone.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is a new chapter, which at the same time is the last full chapter I have pre-written.  
> The muses haven't kissed me with inspiration for this story in a while so it might be another while until the next chapter comes. In the mean time, I hope you enjoy this chapter and see you soon :)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Traveling via the floo network was definitely more comfortable than apparating, Kate found. She also instantly preferred it because it had worked for her. The Ministry wasn’t her favorite place to be now but she had been able to reach it and it was in London. She could make her way home from there.

The downside of using the floo network as a Muggle quickly showed itself because a wizard with official looking robes immediately approached them. Great.

“Good morning, may I implore your reason for visiting the Ministry today?” he reeling off the official introductory sentence he had no doubt rehearsed while giving her a once-over. Still in yesterday’s clothes which he couldn’t know but they definitely stuck out against all the other wizarding folk in their robes around them.

“Uhm.” Kate tried to think of something quickly. “We’re here to visit Percy Weasley,” she said then, straightening up and fixing the man with a firm look. It didn’t matter if you were faking it, as long as you were confident about it.

“This way, please.” The man nodded and led them away to a waiting area while he contacted Percy. Kate felt incredibly relieved when he came rather quickly and relieved the other wizard of his charge.

“Thank you, Beales. This way please,” Percy said rather formally and gestured for them to go the same way he had come. Kate followed, bouncing Benni in her arms. The boy seemed pretty startled at all that had transpired in the last five minutes or so. She didn’t want him to be scared of magic, or his grandmother, but she would not allow anyone, especially someone she had barely known a day, to assume disciplinary actions on her son.

“What’s wrong?” Percy asked with noticeable worry when they arrived at what she assumed to be his office.

“Uhm.” Kate rubbed Benni’s back, thankful that he wasn’t crying so far. “Your mother did some magic on him without asking me and we sort of just… left?”

“Through the floo?” Percy gaped at them.

Kate shrugged. “I saw you use it and Charlie explained to me how it worked. I can’t apparate and Devon’s quite far from here.”

Percy stared at her for a few more, long moments before he released a breath that half sounded like a astonished laugh. “So you just used a magical form of transportation you had never used before.”

Kate gave another shrug and took a look around the office. It wasn’t very big and it contained a lot of files, books and other papers as far as she could tell. The whole thing looked exactly like the office of someone who went to work before the rest of his family was even up, and probably returned very late as well.

“Charlie said it doesn’t need magic. Which it doesn’t,” she responded belatedly and frowned when she noticed her son try to stick his thumb into his mouth again but recoil. “Can you take it away?” She turned back to Percy. “Whatever she did to him?”

“Of course.” Percy gave a curt nod and stepped closer, raising his wand. He locked eyes with her for a moment and only after she had nodded, he waved the device. “Finite incantatem.”

Benni eyed his uncle rather suspiciously but tried his thumb and Kate was relieved when it remained in his mouth.

“End the enchantment,” she mumbled, kissing his forehead gently.

“You know Latin?” Percy inquired with interest and gestured to the chair opposite his desk on which she then took a seat.

“I was studying medicine before I had him. I had to gain my… In Germany you call it Latinum? I don’t know. It’s a sort of qualification for a certain level of Latin you have studied.”

“Interesting.” He sounded like he genuinely meant it too. “And now?”

Kate grimaced. “Now I think we should go home. I might, uh, I should also probably speak with Charlie?”

Percy nodded. “I’ll send him a note. Should he wait for you to contact him or…? Harry brought you over, didn’t he? So he must have your address. He could pass it along if you’re alright with that.”

Kate thought about it for a moment. “How would I contact Charlie? I don’t have a fireplace with a floo network.” And she didn’t want one either. She didn’t want anyone to just pop into her home uninvited. Did wizarding people have something like alarm systems? Maybe she should ask Harriet about that.

“Right.” Percy grabbed a piece of paper and a… quill. An honest to God feather quill. Kate had been able to tell that wizarding folk were a bit behind on the modern, Muggle times but really? Feather quills to write with? With ink pots? And, that was not paper, was it? It was parchment. Lord help her. “The easiest way would be to send an owl which I don’t think you have?”

Kate sat back against the backrest heavily. “You’re kidding.”

Percy eyed her.

“You use feather quills and ink pots to write on parchment and then you send letters with owls?”

“Yes,” he confirmed slowly. “Is that… Is that not how Muggles do it?”

Kate couldn’t help but, she started giggling. “No, not at all,” she got out, shaking her head. “I’m sorry. I’ve just had… a day. And it’s not even lunch time!”

Percy’s lips slowly pulled into a smile. “You’re right. But we will be taking an early lunch break nonetheless,” he announced and got up. “Shall we?” He gestured towards the door and led them out of the Ministry.

Diagon Alley didn’t look any more inviting than the first time they had been there but Kate kept her opinion to herself. Percy seemed to have a plan and she was going along with it.

“Here we are,” he said, stopping in front of a store. _Eeylops Owl Emporium_ Kate read from the sign above the shop and she could attest to that, a few owls were displayed outside in cages watching the passersby. “We are going to get you an owl.”

“Percy, I don’t have-“

“Call it belated birthday presents for any of the four I missed,” Percy cut her off with another curt smile and held the door open for them to step through.

Benni immediately loved the shop, his eyes widening as far as they would possibly go at all the cages with so many different owls. The owner of the shop approached them and spoke with Percy briefly but Percy gestured for her to have a look around so that was what they did.

“Be careful, they might bite,” Kate cautioned her son as he reached out towards one of the cages. Benni snatched back his hand quickly and she found herself praying that Molly’s actions weren’t going to leave a lasting impression.

“Which one do you like, Benni?” Percy asked his nephew, coming to their side.

“We’re actually not allowed to have pets at the flat,” Kate remembered then and grimaced.

“Not to worry dear,” the shop keeper told her and came around the three of them. “They prefer to fly freely, most of them. Smart birds, they are. ‘ll come when you call ‘em, right to your window sill. Just gotta keep a little landing area for ‘em so they know where they belong.”

“Okay.” Kate took a look around at the different birds, feeling overwhelmed with the choice.

“Ich mag die da, Mama,” (I like that one, Mama) Benni mumbled into her shoulder a few moments later and pointed his finger at one of the cages.

“Barred owl, this one. On the smaller side but very agile,” the shop keeper explained and produced a treat which he offered Benni to give to the owl. “Not a biter either, that one.”

Kate stepped closer so that Benni was within reach and smiled when he offered the owl the treat, the bird taking it and hooting softly.

“Er mag mich!” Benni screeched with delight.

“Is it a male or female owl?” Kate asked, still smiling down at her son.

“This one’s a boy, m’boy.” The shop keeper winked at Benni and opened the cage, the owl obediently coming onto his arm. Benni’s eyes widened as the man held the birds towards him. Hesitantly he reached out his hand and very carefully petted the bird when it did not recoil. Kate wasn’t an expert but even she knew that that was not normal behavior for an owl. This had to be a magical one, clearly.

“This one, please,” Percy told the shop keeper. “And a full starter set. Extra treats.”

“Certainly.” The shop keeper put the owl back into the cage which Benni didn’t like according to his little frown and went over to the counter to get them whatever was needed to keep an owl as a pet. At some point she would have to stop being so surprised at everything in the magical world, Kate thought, her neck would get sore from all the headshaking she was doing.

Shortly after they left the owl shop with the owl in its cage and a box full of things they needed for it. Percy carried both as Benni didn’t seem inclined to use his own feet for transport still.

“Now you need to give him a name,” Percy told his nephew with a smile.

Benni scrunched up his face as he thought hard about it. Percy and Kate exchanged an amused look.

“His name is Owl,” he decided then. Percy looked a bit perplexed but Kate smiled.

“Like in Winnie the Pooh?”

Benni nodded.

“It’s a children’s book and TV show he likes,” she explained to Percy who nodded slowly. “Benni, can you tell Percy a bit about Winnie the Pooh? He doesn’t know it.”

Benni let out a rather dramatic gasp that made Kate laugh as he gaped at his uncle. “I like Winnie the Pooh so much!” He started giving Percy a very childlike rundown of Winnie the Pooh with Kate adding in a few details here and there so it made more sense. In the end Percy asked if he could borrow the book from Benni to which Benni agreed immediately and invited him to come over to watch one of the tapes they had brought from Germany.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Percy had long gone back to the Ministry as his lunch break didn’t last forever and Benni was down for a nap after the exciting first half of the day he had had, when the door bell rang. Kate instantly knew that she would find a(nother) Weasley or someone associated with them on the front steps when she went down to meet them at the house door, rather than the door to their flat. Harriet was upstairs and promised to have an eye and ear out for Benni who hopefully had not been roused by the sound of the bell.

Standing on the stairs was Hermione and then a few steps back Charlie. No Molly. Kate opened the door wider and wordlessly invited them in.

Harriet had already made tea and so they sat down at the table where Kate had sat with Hermione just the day before. So much could change within a day.

“Is Benni okay?” Charlie asked, speaking up first.

“He is fine,” Kate told him somewhat stiffly and stirred her tea.

“Did you get Harriet to cancel the charm? Mum said it wasn’t a complicated one so it shouldn’t-“

Kate cut him off. “Percy canceled the charm for us.”

Charlie gaped at her and even Hermione seemed surprised.

“Percy?”

“Your brother? The one that taught me the floo?” Kate gave him a look and sat back, taking a sip. “Finite incantatem. End the enchantment. Kind of interesting how spells seem to originate from Latin or Greek most of the time.”

“Actually it is,” Hermione mumbled and Kate filed that away for later but ignored it for now.

“You went to Percy?” Charlie was still staring at her in disbelief.

“Where else was I supposed to go, Charlie?” she asked him with a hard tone to her voice now. “The floo was the only meaningful way of traveling I had at the time and people at the Ministry like to know what Muggles are doing when they show up in their atrium. I don’t know anyone else in the magical world if you weren’t aware. Percy came and got us, canceled the charm and then he took us out for lunch. He’s nice.”

“Percy is-“ Charlie began but Hermione stopped him.

“Very helpful,” she finished the sentence for him, giving him a pointed look. “We got worried when we followed you through the floo and couldn’t find you. The guard was a little… unhelpful but we’re glad Percy was there for you.” She gave the redhead another look – he had better be glad his brother had been there, or else. “Hopefully Benni wasn’t spooked by the charm? You’re absolutely right that no one should do magic on your son without your permission but Molly meant no harm.”

Kate huffed a little but nodded. “So far I don’t think it’s left a lasting impression. But I’ll keep an eye on it obviously.”

Hermione nodded and gave her a tentative smile.

“What do you think about that?” Kate wanted to know from Charlie and he wondered how it was possible for the lovely, open and warm woman from yesterday and this morning to look so closed off and hardened now. It all came down to their son, he thought to himself.

“Mum’s like that sometimes,” he started and anyone could see that it was the wrong thing to say. “Which doesn’t make her right but like Hermione said, she didn’t mean any harm. She’s just kind of… overbearing sometimes.” A lot of the times, but he wasn’t about to say that. He got a feeling Kate knew that even without him saying though.

“So you think it’s fine to do magic on him without his or my permission if you mean no harm.” Her look pierced right through him.

Charlie swallowed. “I mean… what do you want me to say?” he asked defensively and again it was the wrong thing to say because Kate crossed her arms over her chest. “Kate, I’m sorry, I don’t know, I really don’t know. This time yesterday I didn’t even know I had a son and I’ve grown up with magic, there was never… That was never a question I had to think about before now.”

“Well, you better make up your mind then,” she told him sharply.

“My parents are dentists,” Hermione said suddenly, unprompted and with no obvious connection.

Kate looked at her with a confused frown but Hermione said nothing else, just waited. Hermione’s parents were dentists? Why would she- Dentist was a Muggle word. What had Charlie said therapists were called? Mind healers. Maybe dentists were teeth healers in the wizarding world. Right, Kate remembered then, she had read that Hermione was Muggle-born. Her parents were both Muggles.

“They, uhm, they live in Australia at the moment but I could pass along their email addresses if you would like. It took them a while to adjust to me being a witch and all that, they’d be happy to talk to you about it, I’m sure.”

Kate nodded silently, swallowing against a lump in her throat. Talking to other parents who had gone through it before sounded… great.

Benni woke soon after and Charlie definitely looked emotional when the sleepy boy chose him to sit on as he woke up. Then Benni pulled his father to his toy corner and showed him a few of his toys which they played with then.

“It’ll be alright,” Hermione told Kate quietly as they both watched the duo play. The first course of action was, naturally, to see how many toys Charlie could levitate at once. Currently there were five.

“Would your parents say the same?” Kate questioned and Hermione cast her eyes down. “I’m sorry, I’m very… cynical, I guess, I’m just-“

“My parents would probably tell you that it’s not alright, and they would probably be right,” Hermione admitted slowly.

Kate nodded, one hand clenching into a fist under the table.

“They’re angry at me,” Hermione admitted and gave a small, helpless shrug. “I guess they have every right to be because I performed quite powerful magic on them without asking their permission.” She met Kate’s eyes and Kate could see so much guilt in Hermione’s look that she had to swallow harshly. “I obliviated them, that means I altered their memories so they… so they would forget me and I also put a compulsion on them so they would move to Australia, out of harm’s way.”

Kate’s eyes widened and her stomach turned. That was… She hadn’t allowed herself to entertain thoughts on all the possibilities for what you could do with magic but this was… She looked over to her son quickly and felt dread start to tie her stomach in knots all over again. Memory alteration. Compulsion. She felt sick.

“I was able to reverse it so they remember now but they are still in Australia and it’s… it’s difficult. They’re only alive today because of what I did, I’ve been told by numerous sources, but what I did was also… very invasive, very big.”

Kate swallowed and closed her eyes for a moment.

“It wasn’t exactly legal, what I did, there _are_ rules,” Hermione went on but it didn’t matter. What did it matter if something was illegal when it had already happened to you, maybe something that couldn’t be reversed? That was the same in the wizarding and in the Muggle world. It didn’t matter. Someone could stab you with a knife, which was illegal, but you would still suffer the consequences before anything happened to the assailant, if anything happened to the assailant at all. Because the assailant could just make you forget about it, couldn’t they? They could obiviate you, alter your memories, and give you a compulsion to cover up the evidence, and they could probably do so many other things to you and-

“I need some air,” Kate choked out and fled the room. She grabbed her purse on the way out and left the house.

It was Charlie who followed and found her on the corner of their street, pacing while she smoked. She hadn’t smoked in years, not since she’d known she was pregnant with Benni, but lately she’d fallen back into the habit, had needed just _something_ to soothe her frayed nerves with.

“I’m not going to say it’ll be alright,” he told her upfront and she was thankful for it. “And I’m not going to say I understand because I don’t.” She nodded at him and took another drag. “But I would like to.” She blew out the smoke and nodded again, trying a shaky smile. “Can I have one?”

Her eyebrows rose but she shook another cigarette from her pack and gave him her lighter. Then she laughed at him because he didn’t know how to use it and lit up the cigarette for him. He took a deep drag and exhaled slowly.

“Didn’t know cigarettes were a thing with you guys,” she commented, pocketing the pack again.

“I work in Romania, people smoke like chimneys there.” Charlie gave a shrug and Kate squashed the thought that he looked far too attractive smoking as she squashed the rest of her own cigarette on the floor. As she bent to pick it up, it suddenly disappeared.

“What…?” She looked at the spot with confusion then up at Charlie who grinned.

“Wandless magic,” he whispered conspiratorially. “Vanishing charms are dead useful.”

Kate shook her head to herself and watched him smoke until he was finished with his cigarette as well.

“Can I see that thing again?” he asked as they made their way back.

“What thing?”

“The flamemaker.”

“The flame- oh, you mean the lighter.” She chuckled and gave it to him. He tried to click it a few times like he had seen her do until he succeeded and produced a flame.

“That’s amazing,” he marveled and Kate almost rolled her eyes. Lighters were really not the most amazing technology out there in the Muggle world.

“How do you light your cigarettes usually?” She was curious now. Did wizarding folk have something similar to lighters or did they just use a spell with their wands? Wands were a universal tool like that, she figured.

“Uh, with a wand or wandless if you’re able to. Not everyone can.”

“Huh.” She made a curious sound. “So people can have different levels of ability in it?” It seemed fairly obvious, especially with what she had read about Harry who’d been called the greatest wizard in the world now, after the deaths of some old headmasters and then the evil himself, Voldemort. Ridiculous name, if you asked Kate. Being German herself the name was so obviously full of evil. Vol de mort. Voll was German for full, and it was probably something similar in Dutch which sounded more like where something like ‘Vol de mort’ would originate from. She could decipher the meaning even without knowing Dutch though – full of death, or murder. Lovely name.

“Oh, definitely,” Charlie confirmed and proceeded to tell her about different areas of magic and who in his family was best (or worst) at them.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, hello! I am tentatively taking this story off hiatus because through talking with a lovely friend, I've reconnected with this story and want to see if I can continue it. Also I realized I had a completed chapter sitting in the folder without posting it so this is the one I am posting now.  
> If you liked the story so far, are hopefully glad to see it's possibly back on and/or liked this chapter, I'd love it if you left a comment (and subscribed and left a kudo if you haven't yet) so I know that I'm not just putting this out into the void. Thank you!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Charlie rolled over, again, trying to find a position in which he would be comfortable enough to nod off. So far it hadn’t happened but that had more to do with the whirlwind of thoughts in his head than the couch Kate had made up for him to sleep on.

It was the second night in a row he had a new reason why he couldn’t sleep but this one was much more profound. It also interfered with his previous reasons why he couldn’t sleep well because he had been pondering when and how to get back to Romania. Now he had a son and that changed everything.

When Kate had taken Benni and jumped through the floo like it was no big deal, he had thought he would never see them again. He had reacted as such, berating his mother who didn’t understand his upset at all because she thought she knew best. Just like when she’d cut their hair, or done countless other things because she thought she knew best.

Harry had made him see reason eventually and they’d gone through to the Ministry, only to find Kate and Benni not there. The atrium guard had been less than helpful and Charlie could imagine why, surely Percy had asked him not to say anything.

Percy. Out of all his brothers, of all people, Percy. Percy had come to the rescue and Kate seemed to like him and Benni  _definitely_ liked him. Benni had shown him his Winnie-the-Pooh things after he’d woken up from his nap but the experience felt cheapened by the fact that his brother had been shown first. Percy. Of all people Percy.

Benni and Kate had introduced him to Owl, Benni’s new pet, and while the owl was beautiful and kind and Benni clearly loved it already after just a few hours, again all Charlie could see that the first gift from his family to Benni had come from Percy as well.

So now he was lying there, on Kate’s couch, staring at the ceiling, at war with himself. He wanted to go back to Romania, badly, his family was stifling him and he was needed at the reserve as well. But now he had Benni and he wanted to know his son, wanted to get to know the adorable, kind and cheerful little boy whom he could see himself in so much and who  _loved flying_ . He was afraid he couldn’t have both things and it scared him. He had never attached himself, was content and completely fine with being so far from England, out of reach, having built his own life and own family back in Romania. But now…

A creak out in the corridor, from the staircase between the two levels of the flat, made his thoughts come to a halt. He listened closely, to someone very quietly sneaking downstairs and past the door to the sitting room into the kitchen. The kitchen door shut with minimal noise and then it was silent once more.

Charlie had a good inkling as to who was in the kitchen now so he rolled off the couch and tiptoed to the kitchen as well. Carefully he opened the door and found who he thought it would be. Kate was standing leaning against the kitchen counter with her back to him and he could hear the sizzle of water heating. Just as he was about to open his mouth to announce himself, she bent forward and he could hear her retching.

“Kate, are you alright?” He rushed forward, putting a hand on her back and looking her over. She was pale and her eyes red but she didn’t look the ill kind of sick.

“Wha- Charlie, what are you-“ She cut herself off and hurried to turn on the water to flush away the vomit in the sink quickly. “I’m fine.”

Charlie didn’t say anything while she finished cleaning but he did give her an apprehensive look when she finally turned around. He kept looking at her until her shoulders dropped and she sighed defeatedly.

“You’re not fine,” he said then and she huffed a small breath. “C’mere.” He held out an arm for her but she just gave him a look. “Kate.”

“Can you magic me to sleep?” she scoffed and rolled her eyes.

He considered her for a moment. “I can.”

She blinked at him then scowled.

“With all your clothes on and nothing naughty happening. Unless you want it to,” he tacked on and gave her his best grin while she narrowed her eyes at him. “C’mon.”

He led her back to his couch and made the couch a bit wider before he asked her to lie down. She seemed like she was going to protest when he lay down behind her and there was definitely a sound of indignation when he unceremoniously shoved his hand up the back of her shirt but then she became very quiet very quickly.

Charlie could tell she didn’t fall asleep instantly, or even quickly, but she was as calm as he hadn’t seen her since she had reappeared in his life, while he ran his fingertips up and down her spine in a slow, steady motion. Her breathing slowed down until it fell into rhythm with his caress and he knew he had her when she nuzzled into his forearm under her head and slid her hand into his.

“Guess that’s a no on the naughty,” he whispered into her hair and grinned at her small snort.

“You wish.”

“Maybe I do,” he replied freely and wondered, fretted, for a moment if he had crossed a line but she stayed right where she was and her breathing didn’t change one bit.

“’s a reason Benni got here,” she mumbled sleepily and he couldn’t help but smirk to himself.

“Sleep, Katie,” he whispered to her and somehow found himself reveling in observing her fall asleep not much later.

Some weight shifting over his body was what woke Charlie the next morning and for a moment he was confused as to how one of the baby dragons had gotten free and why it was crawling all over him until his brain caught up and he realized it wasn’t a baby dragon crawling over him to wriggle himself between his body and the one next to him, but  _his_ baby. He squinted his eyes open to see Benni make himself very comfortable tucked between his father and his still sleeping mother. For a moment Charlie watched Kate sleep, glad and somewhat relieved that she was still sleeping, until he noticed Benni was watching him.

“Hi,” Charlie said as quietly as he could, for a lack of anything else or better to say.

“Hi,” Benni whispered back and seemed content enough because he closed his eyes and… went back to sleep.

Charlie stared from one to the other, stunned. These two were… Somehow their slumber seemed to be infectious because he found himself dozing off not much later.

Charlie woke the second time to the muffled giggles of a child, finding himself alone on the couch now. It sounded like Benni was next door in the kitchen with Kate, he could hear her muffled voice as well as he lay there, staring at the ceiling for a few moments before he rolled off the couch and got dressed again. A few charms later to freshen up, he crossed over from the den to the kitchen where Kate was doing the dishes and Benni ‘drying’ them,  standing on a stool next to his mother by the sink and rubbing a dish towel over a plastic plate and cup.

“Good morning,” Charlie said slowly, eyes finding the clock on the kitchen wall and realizing that it was probably several hours later than when Benni had come to join them. 

“Good morning,” mother and son replied simultaneously and burst into giggles. Charlie found the corners of his mouth pulling into a smile involuntarily.

“Tea or coffee? What do you want to eat for breakfast?” Kate asked, drying her hands off on another towel and turning to him. “Oh, sei vorsichtig damit, das ist schwer und glitschig.” (Oh, be careful, that’s heavy and slippery.) She reached around Benni quickly to help him with the small pot he was attempting to dry now. 

“Tea, please. What’s usually for breakfast?” He sat watched Kate bustle away to start on the tea and stepped behind Benni to assist with the drying, scooping up some leftover bubbles from the edges of the dishwater to swipe them onto the boy’s nose.

First Benni beamed in delight but then he stuck out his tongue to touch the bubbles that were sliding down his nose with the tip of his tongue and, well… “Ewwww,” he shuddered, quickly shutting his mouth and making a face. Charlie chuckled and wiped the bubbles away.

“Uhm, do you take milk or sugar or both?” Kate asked, slowly. He glanced at her and could see on her face that something was up. He raised his eyebrows in question but she shook her head shortly.

“Neither, thank you,” he told her and turned back to Benni who submerged one of his little hands in the remaining dishwater to pull the plug. With avid fascination he watched the water and bubbles swirl away.

“Finished, Mama,” Benni announced and turned on his stool, gently pushing at his father’s stomach to get him to take a step back. Charlie did and Benni hopped off the stool.

“Thank you very much for your help.” Kate smiled at her son and leaned down to give him a kiss. 

“You’re welcome!” Benni crowed brightly making both adults smile.

“When Charlie has had his tea and muesli, maybe he can go to the playground with us. What do you think?” Kate nodded towards Charlie.

Benni eyed him for a few moments, thoughtfully, then nodded. “Do you want to come?” he asked with his small voice and Charlie found himself nodding immediately. “Eat quick, I want to swing!” the boy announced then and ran off.

Kate snorted to herself while Charlie laughed after a moment of bafflement. “Do you want any fruit in your muesli? We have apples and bananas.”

“Uh, banana?” Charlie offered, taking a sip of tea.

Kate didn’t say anything else but she did retrieve a banana, peeled it and then cut it up right into a bowl. It was only when she put the bowl in front of him next to the container of muesli, a spoon and the carton of milk that she hesitated.

“What is it?” he asked quietly, trying to read her face. It was so different now, when everything was so different now. He had read her face plenty of times during their stay in Egypt but for vastly different reasons and for vastly different reactions. Back then he had been trying to gauge her reaction to various ministrations he had applied to her body, now he was trying to guess what was going on in her head. The former was definitely easier than the latter.

“I’m just so used to doing it for Benni that I didn’t even ask if you wanted to… if you wanted them like that.” She gave a lopsided shrug.

“This is perfect, thank you.”

She nodded and was about to say something when there was a vague noise from the next room. One of her eyebrows rose and she listened for any other noises, which promptly came, then sighed. “Better check on him.”

“I’ll eat quick,” Charlie promised with a grin but it was lost on her as she hurried out of the room to make sure their son wasn’t hurting himself.

Benni seemed surprisingly quiet on the way to the playground but Charlie couldn’t find himself minding very much at all because Benni also held onto two of Charlie’s fingers the while way. Kate had a small backpack with a few things in them, Charlie had also put his wand in there because it was a Muggle neighborhood and while he wanted it close by, he didn’t want to accidentally whip it out without thinking.

The playground looked nice, it had several swings, some climbing towers, one of which had a slide, and a few other things. There were some other parents with children there, some of which Kate exchanged greetings with. She didn’t introduce Charlie to anyone which he was just fine with. There were a few scrutinizing looks though and he figured the resemblance, especially the hair, were just too obvious.

“Mama, that’s Zaynab!” Benni cheered, letting go of Charlie’s fingers and running off to a girl roughly Benni’s age. She seemed excited to see him as well and they ran off to play together immediately.

“Hello, Farah,” Kate said to a woman who appeared to be Zaynab’s mother, going by the same dark hair and darker skin as well as the shape of their faces. Most of Farah’s hair was covered by a headscarf though.

“Hello, Kate, good to see you,” Farah replied with a smile and cast a quick look at Charlie.

“Likewise. This is Charlie. Charlie, Farah. Her daughter Zaynab was the first friend Benni made at the playground,” Kate explained and Farah nodded.

“Best friends now, aren’t they. Whenever we go to the playground now, she’s always asking after him.” Farah smiled warmly. 

“Same here. We’ll sit over there, talk to you later?” Kate gestured to a bench that was just emptying as a mother collected her two children and left.

“Sure, sure. I’ll give you a call later today,” Farah promised.

Charlie followed Kate who was quickly striding to the bench and then sitting down, always an eye out towards Benni who came running towards them just as they had sat down. He began tearing at the backpack she had just set to the side.

“What do you need, Benni?” Kate asked, gently pushing away his grabbing hands and opening the backpack. “Wait,” she instructed when he was still trying to tear into the contents of the bag. “What do you need, Benni?” she repeated patiently, holding the opening closed.

“Mamaaa,” he whined but she remained waiting. “I need my bucket!”

“I see.” She got out the bucket and the shovel they had packed earlier. “Here you go.”

Benni made to pull them from her hands but she held on. “What do you say?”

“Thank you, Mama,” he said quickly and ran off with his toys as soon as she let go. Kate shook her head, closed the backpack and leaned back against the backrest.

“He always wants to go to the playground,” she said quietly, watching with Charlie as Zaynab and Benni both started filling their buckets with sand from one big pile to make a new big pile in another spot. “He was in kindergarten in Germany and he loved being with the other kids. He doesn’t have that here yet.”

“Can’t he go to kindergarten somewhere around here?” Charlie asked slowly. None of his siblings or he had gone to kindergarten or primary school, for the largest part of his childhood the other children he had been around had been his brothers and a few kids that lived somewhere in the vicinity of the Burrow. When he’d gone to Hogwarts that had been the first time he had really been around a larger number of other children.

“It isn’t so easy to get into.” Kate shook her head. “There were so many forms and applications we had to fill out for the council when we first arrived. Not all of them have been processed yet, I guess. We’re waiting to hear back whether they can place us or not.” She glanced at him. “Didn’t really help I couldn’t name you at the time. As the child of a British citizen, I guess a few things would be easier for him.”

“We can do that… now?” Charlie offered and she nodded.

“I guess we can. I’m not sure of the procedure though. I’m sure you’re recorded somewhere around here as well but primarily your documentation would be somewhere else. I don’t know how it all works with a child that is… half and half.” She spoke quietly which surprised him at first but then he figured that she didn’t want to be overheard and that was also the reason why she used ‘somewhere around here’ and ‘somewhere else’. “Percy’s offered to help though so I think it should work out fine.”

Charlie gave a vague hum at that and Kate looked at him for a moment.

“You don’t really like your brother very much, do you?” she asked bluntly but still in a calm, quiet voice.

Charlie spluttered. “I like Percy just fine!” he tried to claim but he could tell Kate wasn’t really buying it. “We’re just very different.”

“The dragon tamer and the paper pusher,” she summarized flatly.

“That’s not- You don’t-“ He didn’t know how to explain it to her, how to make her see that Percy was just Percy, what he had done, and that there were reasons for all of it.

“You know, people like me, we learn early on and very quickly to read undertones and body language and all of the things that aren’t said,” she told him simply, waving back to Benni when he turned towards them and waved.

“People like you? Muggles?” Charlie was confused.

Kate just gave him a mild look. “When are you going back to Romania?”

He blinked, then shook his head as if to clear it. “What?”

“You said the reserve was in Romania, no?”

He blinked again, thoroughly taken aback by the abrupt change of topic. “Kate, people like you? I don’t understand.”

“People who are not straight,” she said finally and at once he felt stupid. He had known that. He had known that since the first night they had spent together.

People like Kate, people who where not straight, knew undertones and body language and unsaid things. Yes, he could see what she meant now.

“Percy isn’t-“

Kate cut him off with a scoff. “I don’t think any of you would know if he were but even if I knew, I wouldn’t be having this conversation with you like this. It wouldn’t be my place to reveal that to anyone.” She gave him another look, this one more piercing. “I mean that I can tell that he’s an outcast in your family. I can tell that he is different than the rest of you. Or maybe he isn’t so different but you make him feel like he is. I saw the glances and eye rolls, I heard the scoffs and impatience when he said something, I noticed that people talked all over him and wouldn’t let him finish.”

“We don’t-“

This time she just needed another look to quiet him. “I won’t let you teach that to Benni.”

Charlie opened his mouth to voice his indignant protest but just then Benni came running up to them.

“Mama, come look!” He tugged on Kate’s hand and pulled her with him to inspect the sand mountain he and Zaynab had built.

Charlie’s time to shine came a little later, when Benni wanted to go to the swings. He pushed the boy as high as he dared and reveled in Benni’s giggles and shrieks of delight as he was dangling in the air on the swing.

“Not so high!” he pleaded after a few very high ones though so Charlie pushed him a little less.

“Like this?” he asked.

“Yes!” Benni twisted in his seat a little to nod at Charlie, totally screwing their momentum but it didn’t matter, Benni slid off the swing a moment later anyway. “Charlie?” He came towards his father and peered up at him.

“Yes?” Charlie crouched down and Benni looked at him contemplatively. “What is it?”

Benni took another step closer so he could whisper to Charlie, or what he thought was a whisper anyway. “Can you fly me at home?” he asked with puppy eyes.

Charlie chuckled. “We have to ask Mama.”

Benni craned his neck for his mother who was sitting with Farah now, chatting.

“I think she won’t mind,” Charlie helped and Benni nodded. “I can’t fly you on the way home but you can ride on my shoulders, if you want,” he offered and Benni immediately lifted his arms. Charlie swung him up and around to sit the boy on his shoulders and when he straightened up to his full height, Benni crowed. Kate had called over that they were going home for lunch in a few minutes which Benni had graciously ignored in favor of swinging even higher.

“Mama, guck, ich bin groß!” (Mama, look, I’m tall!) he called over to his mother who was laughing at them.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~


End file.
